


What Tradition Told You

by Lapin



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Causing their parents grief, Drabble Collection, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, High School, Like they do, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Rivalry, Teenagers, unions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2017-12-04 18:00:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 35,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/713485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lapin/pseuds/Lapin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Today's world, where Legolas is a rich pretty boy searching for distraction and Gimli, a union man's son, provides it with little trouble. Where Thorin is head of the union and in love with a quiet man not interested in his fight, where Thranduil means well, but succeeds rarely, with a son missing his mother, and where children must find their own way of doing things.</p><p>A series of shorts.<br/><em>On this broken merry go 'round and 'round and 'round we go</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. We Settle In This Town

**Author's Note:**

> A/N There was this prompt I don't remember and there was vodka and the bad influences I call my friends and X2 was on FX and I don't even know. I'm sorry.
> 
> Disclaimer: Title and lyric in summary are from the Kacey Musgraves song [Merry Go Round](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZfj2Ir3GgQ%22) off the 2013 album "Same Trailer, Different Park". I find the song rather poignant and sadly, an extremely harsh and honest take on small town life.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thorin gives Fíli some advice, against his sister's wishes, and finds again some favour in Bilbo's eyes.

Bilbo's serving today. If he's surprised when Thorin makes sure he's in his section, he gives no indication. He just raises an eyebrow and waits for Thorin to order. 

Thorin looks him up and down, takes in how weary he looks, and asks, “How's Frodo?”

Bilbo swallows. “As well as can be expected.” It's one of the five answers Thorin is given whenever he asks after Frodo, and if it breaks Thorin's heart a little that he knows them all word for word now, he tries not to show it too much. “I have other tables, Thorin. What do you want today?” 

Thorin smiles. “Soup and sandwich.” Bilbo doesn't linger, doesn't even smile, just goes to the next order without pause. Thorin watches openly, the way he's yawning in the corner where he thinks he can't be seen, the circles under his eyes dark, far too dark. He gets his lunch, and doesn't try to make any more small talk. He lets Bilbo do his job without distraction, but still watches.

Six months ago, there would have been a little flirting, a little touch on Thorin's shoulder maybe, or fingers brushing his when Bilbo took his menu. But now there's a six-year-old in Bilbo's little home, taking up all his thoughts and time, and Thorin is left to sit ignored. If anyone should understand, it should be him, but there's still a sad sort of selfishness in him that wishes Bilbo's cousins had stayed on dry land where they belonged.

Bilbo's exhausted though, and if anything kills that petty selfishness, it's that fact.

Thorin eats, and goes back to work. The cars won't fix themselves, and wishing for past to change won't do a damn thing, as he well knows.

He thinks of Bilbo though, when he goes home and finds Fíli outside, smoking an illicit cigarette before his mother comes home. He doesn't put it out when he sees Thorin, doesn't bother, just smiles at the sight of him, and offers one when Thorin sits beside him on the bench. He thinks of Frodo when he takes Fíli up on it, and smokes beside his nephew, thinks about the little boy he's seen a handful of times in town, with Bilbo, so close he's like a shadow. He thinks of when his own nephews were like that, right after their father died. How they clung to him like he would soon disappear too. 

“Failed my history exam,” Fíli says, quietly, obviously ashamed. “I'm going to have to withdraw.”

Thorin sighs, and inhales deeply. “Just don't tell your mother.” 

“Wasn't exactly planning on it,” his nephew laughs. “I don't even know why I'm there.”

“Because one of you needs to go to uni, and Kíli certainly won't be getting in.” Thorin replies, thinking still of Bilbo, and all the good his degree had done him, waiting tables in a pub. “It makes your mum happy.”

“I want to work with you,” Fíli says, not for the first time, but a little more strongly than before. “I like cars. I'm good with them.” He shakes his head. “I don't like books, or maths, or anything else those gobshites think we need to know. I'm tired of wasting my time like this.”

“Your mum wants you to have a degree before you decide,” Thorin says, without much fire. Truthfully, he'd like nothing better than to have his nephews by his side, but Dís won't have it, and he won't go against her wishes directly. “See the world a little. Go abroad.”

“I don't want to go abroad,” Fíli argues. “I want to join the union. I want to stay with everyone.”

Thorin shakes his head, and exhales a smoke ring. “You don't know that, lad. You're trying to hold on to what you know.”

For a long time, Fíli sits quietly with him, then says, “When am I going to be old enough that you two accept that I know what I want out of my life?” It breaks Thorin's resolve, just enough that Fíli can see, and he pushes a little harder, “I don't want what you and Mum want for me. I don't want to be a scientist or a professor or a doctor or a barrister or whatever nonsense you two have dreamed up. I want to stay here, stay _home_ and join the union and fix cars. I don't want more.”

“Fíli...” Thorin feels like he should be putting up more of a fight on behalf of his sister, but he doesn't know what to say. He understands where Fíli is coming from, understands the contentment with having a skill and being good at it, with having a home that's theirs, with belonging to a union so tight-knit they were like blood. Thorin loves the village, loves his place in it, and if some things aren't to his satisfaction just yet, like a denied attraction and a man too tired for his age, well, those things they can be changed, fixed. He still has no desire to leave. This is his home. “Your father would have wanted you and Kíli to go to uni.”

"Are you really going to pretend our father gave a fuck what we did with our lives?" Fíli asks, one eyebrow raised incredulously. Sometimes Thorin forgets what a sharp child Fíli was, that unlike Kíli, Fíli knows the truth. His nephew shakes his head, blonde hair catching the sunset, and says, “You know, Kíli wants to be a goldsmith.” Thorin raises his eyebrows. “Dori says he'll take him on.”

“Dori said that?” Thorin asks, surprised. 

“Yeah, he did. He offered Kíli an apprenticeship when he finishes school. He's going to take it.” Fíli shrugs. “He doesn't want to go to uni either. Don't know why Mum thinks we should go, but it's not what we want.” 

Thorin shakes his head, his long hair starting to fight the knot he'd twisted it in at breakfast, strands falling around his face. “If you think I'm going to argue your case to your mother-”

“No.” Fíli cuts him off, but shrinks when Thorin gives him a look. “Sorry. Didn't mean to be rude, Uncle. But no, that's not what I mean. It's only, you know what I mean, about all of this. I know Mum wanted to go, but you didn't. You get it.” 

Thorin supposes he does. He'd never been any good at school, and it had been a fairly easy decision to forgo college and go straight into his apprenticeship at sixteen, picking up the finer points of a trade he'd been taught since he could walk. It had been easy, so very easy, to just be what his father had been, and his grandfather before him, to join the union and lead it like they had. 

He looks at his nephew, and remembers him as a child, a blonde anomaly in their dark-haired family, following Thorin around and not his own father, watching him carefully as he changed the oil in a thousand cars, installed after-market radios, and changed an infinite number of tyres. He'd watched and learned by example, his eyes big and comprehending. 

He supposes he should never have expected different of the lad, or of Kíli, always more interested in learning silly things like paper cranes than the kings. They've always been his nephews, always been Durins, even if that hadn't been their father's name, and always been destined to work with their hands.

He says, “And Dori promised he'd take him on?” Fíli nods, and Thorin exhales another smoke ring, steeling himself for his sister's wrath. “You don't have to go back, once the semester is done. You can come to the garage with me, and we'll give you to someone. Dwalin, or maybe Bofur.” Dwalin's good, but Bofur is more precise and better tempered. He'd be a good first teacher. “And Kíli,” he says, resolving himself to the fact his youngest nephew is probably listening in at the window somewhere. “Let me talk to Dori. If he'll take you, you don't have to go to uni.”

There's a loud whoop of joy, and Thorin shakes his head. Dís is going to mount his head on her wall at this point, and he can't say he blames her. But he won't let her push his nephews into the life she wanted for herself, the one she never got to have, up the spout at seventeen and married just a month before Fíli came into the world. 

He won't let her make them give up their wants, not like their father did to them.

The next morning, he takes breakfast in the pub where Bilbo works, smiling when he sees him come in. Behind him follows a small, dark-haired boy, Frodo. Bilbo looks at him, swallows heavily, and then walks over, Frodo at his heels, and asks, with the air of someone at the end of their rope, “Thorin, please, could you lend me a hand?”

“Aye,” he replies, too eager to help Bilbo, to get in his good graces. “What do you need?”

“Could Frodo sit with you, just until Miss gets here? She swears she's on her way, but I have to clock in, and I just can't if I have him,”

And Thorin looks down at little Frodo with his too-big eyes, and asks, “You had breakfast yet, Frodo?”

The boy blinks, then shakes his head, brown curls shifting when he does.

“Neither have I, but the thing is, I hate to eat alone. Mind sitting with me?” He remembers this age pretty well, he hopes, remembers Fíli and Kíli and their childish desire to be spoken to like adults. 

“Can I have oatmeal with brown sugar?” He asks, bottom lip between his teeth, quite serious. Thorin nods, taking it at face value, as should be done with a child.

“As long as I can have my eggs and bacon, lad, you can have your oatmeal and brown sugar.” 

It's enough, and Frodo clambers into the booth with no hesitation, his little feet kicking the wood underneath the booth seat, a steady thumping noise. He's small for his age, Thorin thinks, but keeps to himself. 

“Eggs and bacon?” Bilbo hisses, his breath hot on Thorin's ear as he leans over. “Are you trying to give yourself a heart attack?”

It's the first time he's said it since Frodo came to live with him.

“Maybe,” he replies, the way he always had before. 

His plate, when brought out, has a spinach omelette, a piece of whole grain toast, and a serving of granola and yogurt. His coffee is decaf, against his will, as Bilbo smiles tiredly and Frodo hums over his oatmeal. 

Thorin smiles, and offers the boy the brown sugar, as Bilbo glares.


	2. Mary Jane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Legolas and Gimli, high school students from different sides of the tracks, lie on the bed and share a bowl. Gimli's parents at least care.

The scratch of the blankets is unlike his own bed. Everything in Legolas' bedroom, like the rest of his house, matched, all of it very neat, orderly. Gimli's room doesn't even have matching furniture, his blankets haphazard and old and smelling like the cigarettes and other things he sneaks behind his parents' backs. 

“You're such a snob,” Gimli remarks dryly beside him, passing the bowl back to him easily. “I can see it in that pretty face. Judging my house. Well, how about this, your house is creepy. Looks like the houses you see in those magazines Mum gets. Not like a real house. Not like real people.”

Gimli's never made a secret of how much he dislikes Legolas' family, his money. How much he dislikes Legolas, sometimes. So Legolas wonders how he ended up here, lying on Gimli's bed with him, the window open and a stick of cheap incense burning, as they pass Gimli's entirely unremarkable bowl back and forth. The weed's not cheap at least, Legolas' contribution to this odd day, where the two of them skived off and ended up here, in Gimli's empty house, together. 

He's fully clothed and with his dignity intact, so he supposes there's that. 

“You think I'm pretty?” he asks, instead of whatever else he could say about Gimli or his house. 

Gimli chuckles dryly, and sits up to take a swig of the water he'd thought to bring up with them. “You know you're pretty,” he says, eyes a little red-rimmed in the dying afternoon light that manages to peek through the cracks in the blinds. Lots of boys at their school make the effort to grow a beard, and most fail. Gimli has a full one though, ginger like his long hair, and Legolas wonders what it feels like. 

His head muddled, he pulls on Gimli's arm so he falls back on the bed, then climbs on top of him so he can find out. It tickles a bit, he finds, and it's interesting. More interesting is that Gimli kisses him back, and rolls them over so Legolas is on his back, the kissing turning into something a bit more than he bargained for. He doesn't mind though, he decides, pushing a thigh between Gimli's legs. 

“Jesus Christ,” Gimli swears. “Should stop.” But his hips move against Legolas', so Legolas throws his arms around his broad back, drags his t-shirt up so he's touching bare skin, and Gimli gets the hint, breaks away to strip it off entirely. “Should really stop.”

Legolas is making quick work of the buttons on his own shirt, despite his clumsy fingers, and once he's got it undone, he pushes Gimli up so they can get it off his shoulders and out from under him. “You have a tattoo,” he mutters, blinking and trying to keep his thoughts focused. Gimli has a big black tattoo on his right pectoral, like Legolas' never seen, and he touches it, swipes it with his thumb to see if it smudges. 

“It's not going to wipe off,” Gimli replies, even as he shoves Legolas' legs apart, a surprise. No one's ever dared move him like that in bed, but he doesn't mind, not at all. He's got his jeans open quick enough, but they're too tight to bother getting off, and Gimli doesn't seem to care, so long as they're both free enough he can get one big hand around them. Gimli really does have big hands, he notices. “Should stop,” he says again, but Legolas isn't inclined to. 

“Don't,” he orders, hooking one long leg around Gimli's thigh. “Don't stop,”

Gimli laughs, and doesn't, but he says, “Yeah, and tomorrow you'll pretend this never happened, right?”

“Probably,” Legolas answers, with a shrug, rising up rhythmically with Gimli. His headboard, old and battered, moves in time, beating a hard sound against the wall. “Going to leave a mark.”

“Won't be the first time.” He's oddly jealous of that, wonders if Gimli takes lots of rich pretty boys back to his house and smokes up with them before screwing them. 

He's too far gone to pay much attention, and really, so is Gimli. They come easy and quick, and Gimli climbs off him, grabbing the t-shirt he'd been wearing to wipe them off with. It's not really good enough, and if he wasn't still feeling the effects, he'd be bothered. In this case, he does his jeans up, and clambers over Gimli, half-falling as he looks out the window. “What time is it?”

“Don't know,” Gimli rumbles, but glances at his phone on the bedside table, sitting innocently beside the still lit bowl that's been abandoned in the expensive looking piece of crystal Gimli apparently uses as an ashtray. “Past six. Why? Got a curfew then?”

“Yes,” he answers, wondering where his shirt's gotten to. No matter. He opens Gimli's dresser, Gimli watching from the bed, lighting a cigarette instead, and takes a black t-shirt with something printed on the front. “I need to go, before he calls the police.”

“Your dad?” Gimli asks, as Legolas finds his shoes and phone. His stomach feels sticky and tight, but he doesn't much mind yet. His hair feels like a mess around his shoulders, probably sticking up in places it shouldn't. “Going to call a taxi?” There's a distinct mockery there, and Legolas sneers. 

It's the effects of the weed still, he's sure, that make him straddle Gimli's lap and kiss the mockery off his tongue. But before much else can happen, he slides back off, leaving Gimli half-hard and grasping for him. He's got his trainers back on before Gimli seems to quite know what's happened, then says, “I can walk, thank you.”

His arrogance is shaken when he passes a woman on the front walk, a ginger woman who can't be anyone but Gimli's mother. She looks him up and down, before hazarding, “Aren't you Greenleaf's boy?” She asks like she dearly wishes to be mistaken, so Legolas obliges her and shakes his head, as she noticeably sniffs the air and eyes him sharply. “What have you and my son been up to, then?”

“Nothing,” he lies, and starts walking. She doesn't call after him, but the front door slams behind him. 

The evening is cool on his skin without a jacket, but he keeps walking until he gets far enough away Gimli won't see him call a taxi, paying no mind to the curious glances he gets from Gimli's neighbours as he waits on the cold pavement. It comes, and takes him home with no question. 

His father waits in his study. 

He looks Legolas up and down, taking in his dishevelled hair, his still red eyes, the shirt that's clearly not his, not to mention the way he smells. 

Legolas tucks a long strand of hair behind his ear and waits. 

His father pours himself two fingers of brandy, then says, “Go to bed.” 

Legolas does as he's told.


	3. Same Hurt In Every Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They bury Thranduil's wife on a Thursday.
> 
> Legolas does not cry.
> 
> In which Thranduil tries desperately to connect with his youngest son after a tragedy, and finds help in the form of a rugby-playing union man's son. He's willing to overlook a little youthful indulgence to see his son smile again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N I kind of wanted Thranduil to get some good light. I mean, yeah, he's kind of a dick, but he's still a father. He loves his son, and I think that any parent will overlook quite a few personal prejudices for love of their child. 
> 
> Also, some references to drug use (weed, which barely counts), in case that bothers you.

Thranduil buries his wife on a Thursday. 

His youngest son stands with his brothers, the lone blond among them, his older boys dark haired like their mother is. Was. Like she was. 

He watches as his oldest boy hugs Legolas, the three open with their grief. Legolas stands still and stiff in his brother's embrace, his face as dry as a bone. He hasn't cried yet, not where Thranduil can see. He didn't cry at the hospital, where she was pronounced dead on the scene. He didn't cry when they needed someone to identify the body, and Thranduil couldn't even stand.

And he doesn't cry now, as they put her in the ground. 

But his grief is palpable in his face, and it breaks Thranduil's heart as much as the grey headstone does. 

The wake is quiet and dignified, like she would have wanted. She had never been one for theatrics.

Legolas disappears somewhere between the graveyard and the house, slipping from his brothers' watchful eyes without Thranduil's notice, until it's too late to find him. His oldest offers to search for him, but Thranduil, feeling closer to his youngest than he ever has before, tells him to leave him be. He'll return when he's ready. 

The third boy, the only one with a curl to his hair like their mother had had, finds him in his bed at ten the next day, his good black trousers torn and dirty, his jacket gone, and his crisp white button-up beyond salvageable. His long blond hair is strewn across the pillow, leaves caught in it.

Thranduil looks at him, as his oldest boy asks if they should wake him, get him washed up. 

“No,” he says, and reaches out to brush some stray hair out of his sleeping son's face. “No. Leave him be.”

His son does not stir at his touch. 

Legolas does not recover the way his brothers manage to do. They go back to university, reluctantly, Thranduil thinks, his oldest lingering over his youngest as though he is the parent, not Thranduil. But he must go with the other two, Thranduil insists. Their mother would have been furious at their falling behind, he says, without thinking, and to his surprise, his second son manages to laugh, his eyes sad. 

“She would have boxed our ears.” He says, and sounds like he might cry. 

But his oldest takes him aside before he leaves, his face so serious, and so very much his mother's, enough to make his chest ache. “Don't lock yourself in your office, Father. He needs someone, and it has to be you. You have to help him.” 

Thranduil makes a promise he already knows he'll break. 

Legolas takes to hiding in his room, doing god knows what. His grades remain steady, but he stops going to football or archery. The coaches call him, concerned, but all he can ask is for them to let Legolas take a leave of absence. He has nothing else in him, not enough to force his son back out into the world. He can't even make himself.

And then one day, his son comes home past curfew in a ratty t-shirt three sizes too big, his hair a mess, reeking of smoke, his eyes red-rimmed and open. It is so far outside Thranduil's understanding of his son, it takes a glass of brandy for him to even settle himself enough to send his son to bed. He's not sure he's even punishing him, or just knows his son needs to get cleaned up. 

He sits in his armchair, and drinks his brandy. 

The next day, his son comes home late again, three hours after the final bell, his fine blond hair pulled back in a messy plait, and a too-big hooded sweatshirt on that emanates the acrid stench of cigarettes and outdoors. “Forgot my coat,” he says, as Thranduil eyes it, startled. 

They stand in awkward silence for a moment, Thranduil not knowing what to say. It had always been his wife that had handled their sons' more personal problems. Thranduil provided their home and tended their needs, but she had been the parent they talked to, confessed their hearts to. 

He doesn't know what to say.

“You're home late.” Is what he manages, because that feels like something he should worry about. 

Legolas shifts, and pulls the sweatshirt off, the bulky thing mussing his hair when it comes over his head. “I went to the rugby pitch, after school. The team had practice.” He licks his chapped lips. “I watched.”

Thranduil struggles for a way to continue the conversation, these being the most words he's exchanged with his son in some time. “I didn't know you liked rugby,” he says, aware of how forced his tone is, wishing he could somehow find the easy rapport his wife had shared with the boy. 

“I don't.” His son looks as awkward as he feels, but there's something to be said for his son showing emotion at all. “Someone I know is on the team. I went to watch.” He holds up the sweatshirt like proof. “Forgot my coat. He let me wear his.” He shifts. “So I'd be alright for the walk home.”

“Do you need pocket money?” he asks, at a loss for what else to say. 

“No,” he shakes his head, more golden hair falling loose about his face. He's the only one that takes after him, but Thranduil's never been sure how much of a good thing that is, not when his other sons can so easily share their grief and pain, can mourn and move on, while he is stuck in place, waiting for his wife to come home from the shop. 

She'd been buying shoes. 

He thinks she would have been disappointed at dying in such a mundane sort of way. 

But now his son is three hours late, and holding a sweatshirt not his own, his hair a mess, and his eyes bright. 

So Thranduil just says, “You didn't miss dinner. It won't be served for another half hour.” His son nods, and starts upstairs, but on a desperate whim, he calls after him, “Ask one of the maids to wash your friend's sweatshirt. It's polite.” 

Legolas looks at him, over his shoulder, and for just a second, something is there that hasn't been for three months, “His name is Gimli.” He says, and Thranduil snatches at it, holds it close. 

“And he plays rugby?” He asks.

His son nods. “He's good. He's a forward.” 

Thranduil has no idea what that means. His wife had been the athlete, the one who took their boys to every football match in the village and the ones around, who had them learning how to kick a ball in the goal when they were barely walking, in the front garden, two tomato stakes serving as the posts. The only sport he had ever excelled at was archery, a proper gentleman's sport.

But he still attempts to smile, and says, “How nice.” 

Legolas nods, and hurries up the stairs. 

He starts coming home late every Thursday and Friday, disappearing entirely on Saturdays for the matches, Sundays for reasons Thranduil is too anxious to be overbearing about, and if he comes home smelling of cigarettes and less legal smoke, with red marks on his neck and his hair mussed, well, he's coming home with a smile that curls the corners of his lips like a secret on his face, and a lightness in his eyes. One day, he catches his son laughing at his mobile, and he could cry at the sound. 

His son is healing. It's all he can ask for. 

Or it is, until Glóin Durin invites himself over to his table while he takes his tea in a a cafe across from his offices. 

Thranduil can admit he doesn't know him very well, except as one of the many gruff men who follows Thorin Durin around. He's a stout, bearded man with auburn hair and tattoos on his arms, enough to make Thranduil raise an eyebrow in distaste before remembering his manners and inviting him to sit. 

“No, thank you,” he refuses. “This won't take but a minute.” 

“Does Thorin have business with me?” He hazards, wondering just what the man wants with him this time. They haven't had negotiations for months, and he's allowed the union to keep to themselves, as they like. Honestly, he hasn't had the heart for it. 

“No, but your son seems to have some business with my son.” He says. “Your youngest and my boy been spending a lot of time together, here lately.” 

“Gimli is your son?” He asks, though he doesn't need to.

“Aye,” Glóin says, nodding. “He's my boy.” There's something in the way he says it that tells Thranduil this isn't a friendly conversation. “And I can't say I like the idea of my boy spending all his time with yours. It doesn't look good for him, getting so close with one of your lot.” 

Thranduil does nothing so crass as scowl, but he drops the pretense of a smile. “My son isn't good enough company for yours?” 

“That's not what I'm trying to say, and you know it.” Glóin shakes his head. “But they're not exactly from the same sort, are they?”

Indeed they're not, and if this were happening any other way, yes, he can admit he would have been the first to warn the boy off. But it's this time, it's now, and Gimli is the only person who makes his son smile. 

“They seem to have enough common ground.” He replies sharply, and takes a sip of his tea. “And the boys are old enough to choose their own company responsibly.” That part is perhaps a lie, because his son smells like smoke a little too often for his comfort, but yesterday he was kicking a football around in the front garden, smiling to himself, and Thranduil is willing to overlook some youthful indiscretion in exchange for that. 

Glóin sighs noisily, and jams his hands in his pockets. “I'd hoped you'd be a bit more understanding of my position here, Greenleaf, but suppose that's a little beyond you, eh?” 

Thranduil raises an eyebrow coolly and waits to see what else the man has to say. 

Nothing else apparently, because he nods civilly, and walks away.

Thranduil goes about his day, and goes home on time, the too-empty house that was once full of children now quiet. 

Only not, today. 

“What's she do all day when you're not eating?” A voice asks incredulously. 

“I don't know,” his son snaps. “I never asked.” 

The other voice laughs, and Thranduil follows the sound to the kitchen, where a stout, ginger boy a bit shorter and a good deal broader in the shoulders than his son stands, leaning against the counter top, eating an apple. He looks a good deal like his father, he thinks. 

His son has his eyes narrowed at him as he boosts himself up to sit on the counter beside him, scowling. “Like Downton Abbey in here,” the boy, Gimli, he reminds himself, says. “I suppose I should learn to drive and you should get yourself some harem trousers.” 

“Know an awful lot about that show, don't you?” His son teases, with a wicked gleam he hasn't realized how much he's missed. 

“Did you not notice the three sisters I live with?” Gimli replies, as Legolas tugs on his beard. “Oi, don't be thinking that's cute, or nothing,” he smacks Legolas' hand away. “When's your dad coming home then?”

Thranduil clears his throat and both boys look up. When his son's body language starts to turn defensive, he's quick to say, “I have some work to do, in my study.” He doesn't, not at all, but he has a book that's sat with the bookmark in since before the day they buried her, and maybe it's time to finish it. “Try not to make a mess, or you will be cleaning it, not the maid.” 

It slips out, and it isn't until he sees the raw, open look on his son's face that he remembers his wife always said that, not him. But it feels alright in his mouth, so he raises his eyebrows in warning, until his son half-smiles at him and says, “Yes, Father.”

And he goes to his study. 

And sits in his armchair.

And finishes his book.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? Think we're going back to the rest of the group after this one.


	4. Like Our Parents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gimli defends his relationship with Legolas, whatever it is. 
> 
> There are weeds in Legolas' mother's flowers.

His father sits at the kitchen table, a bottle of whisky open beside him, one glass already half-empty. His mother is in her dressing gown, making tea. 

“Do you know what time it is?” his father asks him, draining the rest of the glass. 

Gimli shoulders his bag, wonders if he smells like where he's been, who he's been with. Wonders what they know. “You never cared before,” he stalls. 

It's his mother who comes over, grabs his hair, and presses it to her nose, inhaling deep. “Smoke,” she confirms, and she sounds like she might cry. It makes him sick to his stomach with guilt, to think he's made his mum cry. “And I'd ask you who you've been with, but we already know that, don't we?” 

“Mum -” 

“No,” she snaps. “No, don't you dare lie to me, Gimli, not about this.” 

Gimli looks between them, tries to find a chink in the united front they've put up. It's often his dad he can rely on to at least listen to him, but he doesn't know how much he's had already, if he's still reasonable. 

“Your cousin saw you with him,” his mum says. “Says you and him been sneaking off together for weeks, that he's even been at your rugby matches.” She says it like it's the gravest sin they've committed. “I thought I recognized him that day, he's the mirror image of his bloody father,” 

“What day was this?” his father asks, his brow furrowed. 

“Oh yes,” his mum turns to him. “I didn't tell your father about that, and what a fool I was for not. Your son was smoking up in the bloody house, with that boy, and doing god knows what else with him,” Gimli's tempted to tell her just what he had been doing with him that day, but he knows when to keep his mouth shut. 

“Gimli,” his father shakes his head, and takes the tea his mum holds out to him. “He's Greenleaf's son. You can't be...” he waves his hand, like that encompasses everything he does with Legolas, “not with him. Anyone but him.” He points at him, holding Gimli's eyes, showing he's still sober enough to give orders. “I want this ended. Tomorrow, first thing, you tell this boy it's done.” 

Gimli rubs his tongue over his teeth, his mouth still dry even though they'd split a bottle of water between them. They'd cleaned up, but his stomach is still tacky, his shirt sticking to it. They'd forgotten the condoms again, but he's always justified it by telling himself what they do doesn't really need condoms, and he's clean anyway. He's sure a nob like Legolas is too. 

He wonders if he smells like sex, if his mum smells that too with the smoke in his hair. 

“No,” he says. 

“ _No?_ ” His mother echoes incredulously. “Did you just tell your father _no_?”

“What did it sound like, Mum?” he asks, his own patience snapping with her. 

“Talk back to your mother again, boy-”

“And you'll what?” Gimli shrugs, getting himself a glass of water. “What are you going to do, Dad? How are you going to stop me from seeing him? We're not doing anything wrong.”

“He's damned Greenleaf, Gimli, and you're a Durin,” he says, like it's enough. 

“This isn't bloody Romeo and Juliet, Dad. Uncle Thorin and Greenleaf aren't challenging each other to duels, fuck, they have tea once a month,” Gimli dismisses, trying to keep his head straight. He feels better with the water in him, cold in his belly. “We're not exactly stabbing each other in alleys anymore.” 

“That doesn't mean it's alright for you to be having it off with one of them!” His father shouts, red in the face, and Gimli is actually taken aback by it. His father never shouts. Never. 

He refills the water glass. His mouth is still dry. “I like him,” he says. 

“That's all very well and good,” his mother says. “But it's not the point.”

“Then what is the point, Mum? What's he done to put you off him, besides look like his dad?” Now he's had too much water, and it sits heavy in his stomach. “I like him.” He picks his bag back up, not remembering when he put it down, his head still muddled. “I'm going to bed.”

He supposes it says something that neither of them stop him. 

In the morning, he finds out just how many people his stupid cousin told when he gets to school, and Legolas is sitting on the front steps, waiting for him. He's got his hair back in a plait, and he never does that unless he's tired. It kind of surprises Gimli, that he knows that much about Legolas and his ways. Still, he brightens up when he sees Gimli, and even smiles when he reaches out and brushes some stray hairs back from his face. Sod it, his cousin's probably told everyone who'll hold still long enough to listen anyway. 

“What'd your dad say?” Gimli asks, curious as to what the high and mighty Greenleaf thinks about his son running around with a Durin, but Legolas just shrugs. 

“He already knew, you know. Known for awhile, I think.”

“And he didn't say nothing?” Gimli questions, confused. 

Legolas shakes his head. “I don't think he minds that much.” He presses up against Gimli when he sits down beside him, the concrete cold through his trousers. He's bony, and taller than Gimli by half a head, so it's not really comfortable when he does this. Might be, he thinks, once they get a bit more used to each other. Legolas seems to like it, in any case, so Gimli doesn't say anything about his hair tickling his nose. “Who told?”

“Mum said 'cousin', so I'm guessing Kíli, 'cause Fíli's still at uni, and Ori wouldn't tell if he knew. He's not like that.” But Kíli is. Gimli's going to shove his stupid head into the wall when he finds him. 

Legolas reaches across his lap, and takes his hand, interlocking their fingers. He doesn't look at Gimli when he does it, like he thinks maybe Gimli's going to pull away. He almost wants to, really. Legolas is so much trouble, maybe too much, and Gimli doesn't need it. 

“Want to go?” he offers, instead. There's some weak sunlight punching through the clouds, little patches of blue sky, and if they're lucky, it'll stay nice. Too nice to bother with what's waiting for them inside. 

“Go where?” Legolas' blond hair shines in the light, fine and pretty like the rest of him. Gimli's seen him naked, seen how he's pale and smooth all over, not like Gimli. Gimli's all brawn and brown from the sun, his hands hard and callused from rugby and and working in the garage. He's got more hair on his chest than most boys in their school have on their heads, and he keeps his beard grown out just because it's too much trouble to shave twice a day. He's working-class, and always will be, and he likes it.

Legolas is smooth and pale and pretty and wealthy, probably bound for uni next year, but last night he had Gimli naked, passing a bowl back and forth before he pushed him back on the bed and rode him hard, long hair loose, strands caught on his wet mouth, eyes half closed. He'd felt good, skin smooth and warm under Gimli's hands, the muscle of his thighs firm where Gimli's fingers pressed in. 

He wonders if he left bruises, as his hand slides up Legolas' thigh now. 

Legolas' hand catches his, presses it in, his eyes dark and mischievous. 

The first bell rings, but he's already letting Legolas turn his face towards him, Legolas' long fingers tangling in Gimli's beard. “I'll see you in music?” he asks, after he's kissed Gimli breathless. 

“Yeah.”

Maybe they'll go to his house after, he thinks, go out in the garden and smoke, or maybe he'll let Legolas play with his hair, as long as he promises not to put flowers in again. He's got lots of flowers out there. 

They were his mum's, he says.

They're in the headmaster's office that afternoon though, Legolas pale beside him and his cousin Kíli in the chair across, ice pressed to his face as he glares hatefully at them both. Gimli hit him a bit harder than necessary, maybe, but it was only so Legolas wouldn't have to. Better Gimli does it. Kíli has to forgive him eventually. 

Judging from the venomous way he's looking at him, it'll be a while. 

Uncle Thorin is the first to arrive, looking thunderous. Gimli grins when he cuffs Kíli around the ear, but he swears when it's his turn. Thorin hits hard, and he doesn't hold back much for them. There'd been the one time his father was pissed and raging, Uncle Thorin had knocked him right out, with one hit. 

“What in the bloody hell is wrong with the pair of you? Fighting in class? You were both raised better than that.” He's furious, enough Gimli knows they'll be hearing about it for months to come. 

“Oi, he hit me, alright?” Kíli says, pointing at Gimli. “I was defending myself!”

“Oh, were you now?” Thorin turns to Gimli, and the look on his face says they're both fucked seven ways to Sunday, regardless of who started it. “So tell me Gimli, what made you decide to start a brawl with your cousin in school?” 

“It's my fault,” Legolas starts, but Gimli cuts in, because it's not, and he won't let him take the blame for it. 

“Kíli called him a slag,” he says hotly, the urge to punch his cousin in the face welling back up. 

“Only because he is one,” Kíli shoots back quickly. “Everyone knows he was still with Haldir when he started up with you, if that's not a slag-”

“-I was not, you lying little shit-” 

“And then he said the only reason Legolas was with me is because of,” gimli stumbles, unsure of how to say it, but it's Legolas' voice, clear and without emotion, that finishes it for him.

“He said the only reason Gimli was with me was because he felt sorry for me since my mum 'went and got herself killed',” Legolas' voice leaves no room for doubt in it being a direct quote, though his tone is still calm, almost bored, despite how Gimli can see his hands shaking. 

Greenleaf sweeps in then, as his uncle turns on Kíli with a look on his face Gimli's never seen before. Legolas turns to his father, calm again, but his hands still shake. “I'm fine, Father,” he says. “I wasn't in it.”

“Are you sure?” Greenleaf's hands hover like he wants to touch Legolas, but he doesn't. 

“No, Greenleaf, it's my nephews that are the trouble here. My apologies for them getting your son involved,” Uncle Thorin says, looking like he's swallowed a lemon for having to apologize to Greenleaf, of all people. 

Legolas looks back at him as his father leads him out. His hands are still shaking, and Gimli hates it, wants to hit Kíli again for it, the stupid wanker.

“Your father is busy,” Thorin says to Gimli. “I'm to collect both of you. Headmaster says you're suspended for a week each, but I must say Gimli, that was a rather stupid decision on your part, when had you only waited, I'd of gladly let you black both Kíli's eyes.” He grabs Kíli by the scruff of his neck, hauling him close. “Many times you've embarrassed me, boy, but I've never been so ashamed of you in my life.”

“Uncle,” Kíli pleads, but Thorin just gives him a shake, enough to quiet him. 

“I'd thought you of all people knew how hard it is to lose a parent, Kíli. I'd thought _better_ of you.” 

“Uncle,” his cousin whines, but it's half-hearted. 

“Not another word out of you,” Thorin orders, pushing him along and gesturing for Gimli to follow. 

Legolas is gone by the time they get outside.

By all rights, he should be grounded with Kíli, and he thinks he would be, if it was up to his dad. But instead, he and Kíli are stuck sweeping up the garage, and doing other chores no one else wants to do. He's allowed to go out though, and Kíli isn't. 

They spend the first day not speaking to one another, but on the second, Kíli says, “I shouldn't have said that about his mum.”

“No, you shouldn't have.” Gimli replies, and that's that. 

The second day, his uncle comes by, and says, so very casually, “I'm meeting Greenleaf in the village.” 

Which means Legolas is home alone, but not for long, because Gimli slips out, before his dad can catch him. The village is sleepy, this time of day, most taking their tea, getting back from it, or longing for it. He's unnoticed, though he takes a longer route to avoid the jewelry store Nori's brother Dori works out, sure he'd be spotted. 

The maid answers the big door, sends him around back, and there he finds Legolas, on his knees, digging in the flowers, pulling up weeds, his long hair clumsily knotted at the back of his head. Gimli's never seen him like this, his fingers dark with dirt, as he struggles with the chore. 

Gimli sits down beside him, and waits for him to stop, look at him. 

“There are weeds,” he says, and Gimli nods.

“There are.”

“Mum never let it get this bad,” he says, and his hair is all over his face, but his hands are dirty, so Gimli pushes it all back behind his ears for him. 

“No, bet she didn't.” He looks at the flowers, pretty, not much different than from what his mum has in her beds, and he thinks of her tears in the kitchen. Thinks of her, and his dad, and how all they see is Thranduil in Legolas' face. But he's not them, and Legolas isn't him, and maybe it's time the Durins and the Greenleafs let it go. So he says, “You can put some in my hair, if you like.”

Legolas smirks, then says, very quietly, “My mother's dead.” 

“Yeah, she is,” Gimli says, because there's nothing else to say to that. He'd known, in an abstract sort of way, that Legolas' mother had died, a few months before that first time. He'd known, but it'd been hard to understand. He and Legolas had spent all their lives going at each other. He'd called him names, things he didn't deserve, thought a lot of cruel things about him. Thought about him, in general. The idea though, that Legolas could somehow be less than himself, could be weak, was difficult. Hard to understand, then, that Legolas had a heart, a family. That death could touch a Greenleaf as easily as it could a Durin.

Now Legolas leans on his shoulder, and Gimli lets him, kisses his temple even. 

“I miss her.” 

“I know you do.” Because how could he not?

They're quiet for a moment, and it feels odd, until Legolas says, “I could have hit him myself, you know.” 


	5. It Ain't Slowing Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kíli's always had a place.
> 
> But when Fíli's gone and Ori's busy and Gimli leaves him behind for some spoiled prat, there's just him. 
> 
> He doesn't much like it.

His world erupts in pain, as his cousin hits him, in the middle of their music class. He stumbles back, hits the chairs, then the floor, falling, undignified. 

Kíli is seven when his father dies. He doesn't remember him. 

Legolas is sixteen when his mother dies, and he remembers everything about her, and it's not fair. It's not fair at all. He gets to swan about looking tragic and getting pats on the head from the teachers and all the leeway no one ever gives Kíli. No, Legolas disappears in the middle of the day, and the teacher shakes her said, says, “Poor lad,” and nothing happens to him. Kíli takes off and he's a delinquent being threatened with an ASBO for everything from getting into it with that bastard Haldir to looking at the policewoman in the cafe wrong. 

And maybe it wouldn't be so bad, really, if he wasn't by himself all the time now, all alone like he's never been in his whole life. It was always him and Fíli and Gimli, with Ori following after the three of them, twisting his sleeves and pleading with them to stay out of trouble, please.

Only now Fíli's at uni and Ori's got a proper job at the library and even Gimli's found something else, and Kíli can't stand it. It's always been the four of them, always.

But now Ori's off being a grown-up, and Fíli's going to the flat above the garage, and where his cousin should be beside him, instead he's in Legolas' space, the two of them snapping at each other more and more, circling each other and it's alright, really. They've been itching for a proper fight for years now, but Kíli wishes they'd just get on with it already.

But when they finally do stop circling each other, it's not to fight, and it's not alright at all. 

Because now they're always together, all the damn time, and Gimli is trying to play bloody football with him except he hates football and it's not like the skinny bastard even attempts to play rugby and he keeps putting flowers in Gimli's hair, and it's infuriating. The stupid prat starts showing up at Gimli's rugby matches, forgetting his coat like an idiot, and then taking Gimli's, like he's his _boyfriend_. Kíli thinks at least he'll get to move up in position on the archery team, except then Gimli convinces Legolas to come back and he's outshone again. Always, by stupid Greenleaf and his perfect aim. 

Kíli hates him, and Gimli too, maybe Gimli more. It's not fair, Gimli's his cousin, always been his cousin, and Legolas is a bloody _Greenleaf_ , he is, his dad is the village councilman, and their family has never been anything but trouble for Durins. Gimli's being so stupid, sneaking off with him all the time, just begging to be caught by someone. Asking for trouble from his damn family, and really, they just don't need anymore.

So he tells Uncle Glóin. It's spiteful and awful and he hates himself for it, but he just wants Legolas to go away already, leave Gimli alone, and his uncle will make that happen. 

Only he doesn't, and Legolas is pulling on Gimli's beard in class and smirking and Kíli opens his mouth before quite knowing what he's about to say. He doesn't even remember what he says, exactly, just knows he wants to hurt Legolas in the worst way, and if anyone knows how to hurt someone in Legolas' position, it's Kíli. He brings up her name, his mother's, and his aim is good, but then, so is his cousin's. 

But the worst part is yet to come. Uncle Thorin says he's _ashamed_ of him.

There's a lot of things Kíli can live with. That's not one of them. 

The first day after the fight is torture, Uncle Thorin not even looking at him, Gimli not speaking to him, and his mum only saying she had raised him better than that before dropping it entirely. For her, that's worse than anything else she could do. Kíli's never been able to stand silence, and now's no exception.

When he can't stand it for another minute that night, he goes out the window and down the big tree, just like Fíli had taught him. His mobile's been buzzing like mad with texts and calls from his brother, but honestly, Kíli's had enough of his family and their disappointment for the night.

There's nowhere to go really, though, in the village, not for him. He can't risk the Pony or the Green Dragon, at least one of the union likely at either or, and he can't risk the cafe, because that's where Dori, Ori's oldest brother, goes when he's finished for the day. 

So he ends up at the corner store, wandering up and down the aisles, until he actually does run into someone he knows, sort of. It's Bilbo, the server from the Green Dragon, with a little boy at his heels. He doesn't look enough like Bilbo to be his, and besides that, Kíli's always had the uncomfortable impression that his Uncle Thorin is more Bilbo's type. Urgh, the less he thinks about his uncle and all that, the happier he'll be. 

“Kíli?” He asks, like he's confirming his name. People always get him and Fíli confused, not for looks but for their rhyming names. 

“Yeah.” He shrugs in answer. “Hello there,” he says, to the boy. “Who're you?”

Normally, most kids this one's age would start talking his ear off, but the little boy just buries his face back in Bilbo's leg. Bilbo sighs, and threads his fingers through the boy's dark curls, giving Kíli an apologetic look. “Sorry, he's still a bit shy. This is Frodo, my um, well, we're going with nephew. He's my cousin Drogo's son.” 

It sounds sort of like him and his uncles Glóin and Óin, who are really his cousins of some sort on his mum's side. “You visiting your uncle?” He asks, trying to get the lad to open up. 

“No,” Bilbo answers, his eyes sad, when Frodo is quiet. “No, Frodo's come to live with me.” 

For a moment, Kíli's confused, but then he sees it, in the way Frodo stays close to Bilbo, the way Bilbo looks so serious. Oh, he thinks. It must have been both of them then. 

He wonders how much Frodo remembers of them.

“Frodo and I are having a late dinner, unfortunately. My fault, I forgot to do the shopping yesterday.” Bilbo holds up a basket with foodstuffs in it, smiling. “What are you doing here so late?”

Kíli shrugs. “I didn't want to be home.”

Bilbo blinks, looking like he's trying to think of a polite comment for the brutally honest answer, but Kíli's more interested in the little boy, and how he's staring up at Kíli so suspiciously. He's a little offended at it, really, because now kids were giving him that look? He crouches, and looks him in the eye. “What are you staring at?” He asks.

Frodo releases Bilbo a little, just a little, and pokes his head around. “Why do you have beads in your hair?” He asks.

Kíli wasn't expecting that, and neither was Bilbo, judging from the way he says, “Frodo, that's very rude.” 

“No, it's alright.” Kíli says, feeling a bit cheered by the question. “I made them. I like making stuff like beads and rings and bracelets. Shiny things.” His brother rolls his eyes at them, and even Gimli tells him he looks like a prat, but he's proud of them, the beads he made with his own hands in the old workshop in back of the house, the one his other uncle, the one he never met, worked in.

“Got rings,” Frodo says, pulling a chain out from under his shirt, where three rings hang. “These were my mummy and daddy's.”

There's two wedding bands and an engagement ring with a pearl in it instead of a diamond. Kíli just smiles, and admires them like Frodo wants him to, because acknowledging why he has them is a little too much, even for him. “Very pretty.”

“Yeah.” Frodo says, like the child he is. Like Kíli once was, a long time ago.

Bilbo sighs from above them, then asks, with a fond look down at Frodo, “Kíli, do you want to eat dinner with us?” 

He thinks about it, and yeah, he's hungry. “Alright.”

Why not?

Bilbo lives in one of the old houses at the edge of the village, not that that means anything, with the size of the village, nestled into the hills that define the immediate landscape until it becomes the mountain they sit at. It's nice, even though it's small, snug and warm with a better garden than his mum has. It smells nice too, like cooking. His house smells like oil and grease and metal, most of the time. He likes it, most of the time. But he likes Bilbo's house too. 

He plays with Frodo while Bilbo cooks, Frodo showing him his toys and his books, before somehow getting a story out of him. He's never read to anyone before, but Frodo doesn't complain, so he guesses his attempt is good enough. He doesn't recognize any of the books, and wonders how many stories his uncles just made up when he was a child.

Bilbo makes a soup with more vegetables than Kíli is used to, with bread. He likes it though, especially when he dunks the dark bread in the broth. When Frodo imitates him, he gets a glare from Bilbo, but whatever, he's not the Durin who wants in Bilbo's bed. He can handle a few glares. Not like he's not used to them at home.

“So,” Bilbo says, after Frodo's in bed with only two more stories read, and tea has been served. “Your uncle mentioned you were in a fight with your cousin. I've never known Durin boys to fight, not without reason.” He stirs some sugar into his tea before sliding the bowl to Kíli. “Thorin is furious, but I think maybe there's a bit more to the story than that, isn't there?”

And in all of it, Kíli realizes no one's actually asked him for his side of things. Not once. 

“Gimli's with that Greenleaf prat, Legolas.” He spits bitterly, even though Bilbo doesn't know why that bothers him so much. He's just a Baggins, and his mother was a Took, if he remembers his mother's gossip right. No business with the Durins and the Greenleafs, just farmers and shopkeepers. 

“So why did that make you insult Legolas like you did?” Bilbo asks, reasonably instead of accusing. “I just think that you of all people know how cruel that was, so if you really did say it, you had a reason.” 

Kíli shoves his biscuit around his plate. “It's not fair.” He says, knowing even now how childish he sounds.

“What's not fair?”

“It's not fair, and it's not right, and Gimli shouldn't be with him all the bloody time, and he is, and it's not fair. He's a Greenleaf, and we're Durins. And he gets all this slack because his mum is dead, but he's not the only one with a dead parent, alright?” Kíli says sharply, breaking his biscuit in half.

“No,” Bilbo agrees. “He's not.” He takes in a breath. “And neither are you.”

“That's not-”

“You were around Frodo's age when your father died, weren't you?” Bilbo asks conversationally. “It was a long time ago, forgive me if I'm wrong. It's hard at that age. I was an adult when my parents passed, and it was still very hard.” He pours himself another cup. “I don't think it ever gets easier, but it must have been very difficult at your age.” 

Kíli cracks the biscuit into smaller pieces, and says, “It's not like I even remember him.” 

Bilbo sighs. “Well, things were very complicated-”

“Don't make excuses for him.” Kíli's not stupid enough to think his dad was any prize. He's always known from the way his uncles and the rest of the union talks around him, the way his mum so carefully tells him stories about him. “She came to all the archery games, you know? Every time, there she was.” Legolas hadn't looked a thing like his mother, her dark-haired and curly, him so pale. But they'd both laughed a lot, and they'd both been too tall and skinny. “It's not fair. He got to keep her til now, and she was a great mum, and now he gets Gimli too. It's not fair! Everyone keeps leaving!” 

He hates the way he knows Bilbo must be looking at him, disbelieving at how petty and selfish he is, but then, well, Bilbo covers his hand with his, and his expression isn't what Kíli'd thought it would be at all. It's kind of sad and understanding. 

“Is that what this is about then?” He says. “Kíli, just because your brother is growing up, and Gimli has someone else in his life doesn't mean they're leaving you, or that they love you any less. Though I'm not so sure Gimli likes you all that much right now, not that I blame him.” 

That's probably true, but Kíli still frowns. “He's a Greenleaf. They've always hated each other.”

Bilbo smiles though, and shakes his head. “You and Gimli and Legolas weren't in the same primary classes, were you?” 

Kíli shakes his head. “No, Mum made sure we were separate. Too much trouble, she said.”

“Well, Gimli and Legolas were always in the same class, and Legolas' mother, she used to come into the pub for lunch, and she always told me about her baby, her youngest boy. And how the Durin boy, the ginger, kept teasing him.” Bilbo laughs as Kíli tries to think of an insult for a dead woman, until Bilbo says, “It used to make her laugh.”

And Kíli's mind stops on its course, redirects. He doesn't understand, so he says, “What do you mean?”

“She knew,” Bilbo shrugs. “Because Legolas used to throw things at Gimli's head if he stopped teasing him.” He laughs, sad and mournful and missing someone Kíli never knew. “She knew that eventually they'd stop pulling pigtails and throwing footballs and figure out all they wanted was the other to pay attention to them, and it used to make her laugh so much. She thought Thranduil would have kittens.” And now Bilbo looks sad, so very sad. “I'm so sorry she never got to see it. I really am. She would have found the whole thing hysterical.” 

Kíli swallows, and finds it painful. “She was nice.” He says, because he remembers her smiling and giving out biscuits at meets. 

“She was.” Bilbo confirms. “She was a very kind person. And she loved her family very much.” 

And now Kíli feels sick over what he said. 

“It was wrong, wasn't it?” He asks. “What I said?”

“You know it was.” Bilbo replies, still soft and nice. “But I think maybe you weren't all that angry with Legolas at all, were you?”

And maybe that's true too.

Kíli finishes his tea, and goes home. He takes the long way through the village, not that it matters. The village isn't that big. He doesn't mind though. It's his village, and he loves it, more than anything else in the world. His mum wants him, and Fíli, to go to uni, he knows, but Fíli's gone and failed and he's never been any good at school himself, is not so arrogant as to believe any uni would take him. Not that he wants to go.

He wants to be a goldsmith. It's not much, and his mother would frown over it, but there's never been a time the metal didn't sing to him. When he's in the old workshop, he feels alright, feels like he understands. The metal bends to his will easily, turns from a lump to lace, and it's what made Dori want to take him on, how he can do that one thing. That one small thing, when he can do nothing else.

He walks by the Green Dragon and the Prancing Pony and the cafe, and listens in idly to the people on the terraces, their late dinners and afters and drinks, the way they laugh. People he's known all his life, seen around and spoken to. His mum thinks he needs more, but he doesn't, really. This is what he knows and loves, this quiet way, and he doesn't want to change. Is it so hard to understand, for her? This kind of love, this ease, does she get it? That all Kíli needs is this place and his family?

His father isn't remembered, but he knows that every archery match, there was someone. His Uncle Thorin, if he could get the time off, or Uncle Glóin and Uncle Óin. Bofur, sometimes, maybe with Bifur if he was having a good day and could tolerate the crowds. Or Dwalin, causing a stir amongst the mums and dads, especially if he had Nori with him. Always someone. Always. And maybe they weren't his dad, but they cheered loud and they hugged him, and called him a good lad. And they're not his dad, but they're all Durins, somehow or another, legitimate like Uncle Thorin, or on the wrong side of the sheets like Nori and his brothers, or by marriage, like Bofur and his. 

And Fíli, he's a Durin, even if his name isn't right. He's a Durin, and he loves it, and never wants to be anything else. His father's name means nothing, means as little as he did, but his Uncle Thorin and his mum, their name means everything to him. He's a Durin, and even if he doesn't join the garage, he'll join the union, a metalworker, and he'll do his uncle proud. 

All of them. Even the one he never met, the one whose workshop he sits in now, the one that had been gathering dust 'til he came along. He's going to do right by them.

Thorin is waiting for him on the porch by the time he gets home, smoking and obviously furious, but Kíli can handle that now. He's ready for it, and he knows he deserves whatever else Thorin or his mum sees fit to throw at him. He can take it. 

“And where have you been?” Thorin asks, voice low and still so disappointed. 

“I had dinner with Bilbo and his nephew, at his house. It's a bit of a walk.” He's not afraid to admit that he uses Bilbo's name as a shameless attempt to soften Thorin up, and it works, as his uncle hurriedly takes another drag, his expression tilting more towards a smile than a frown, before replying. 

“You were with Bilbo?” And who do they think they're fooling, really?

Kíli nods, pleased. “He made soup.” He rocks back and forth on his heels, embarrassed to have to do what needs to be done, but he mans up and says, with only a bit of a stutter, “I'm sorry I made you ashamed of me, Uncle Thorin. I really am. It won't happen again.”

His uncle stands, and claps him on the shoulder. “I doubt that very much.” But then he hugs Kíli, and that's really all he needs to make him feel better. His uncle has forgiven him, and that's all he needs. It really is.

Gimli might take a bit longer, he knows, but when Kíli says he's sorry, he at least knows he's on the right course with him. 

Maybe it'll take awhile, longer than he'd like, but it will happen. Maybe their summers will be different now, maybe there'll be more chairs at the table in the garden when they have their weekly dinners. One for Bilbo, down by his uncles, and another down with them, little Frodo listening wide-eyed as they sneak him extra sweets and tell him all the marvelous pranks they've played. And another for Legolas even, he'll give, beside Gimli. 

And if he's there, they'll have a good number for a proper match, because Gimli will play if Legolas asks him too, and they can teach Frodo. 

His mum and Bombur and Auntie will learn to make vegetarian meals, and maybe Legolas will bring his father, and maybe his brothers on occasion. They'll have a good number then, really, because all his brothers played. It'll be different, he knows, but perhaps different isn't all bad. Not at all. 

And if Uncle Glóin asks after Gimli, and he lies a little for his cousin, that's not so bad. His uncle is just scared, is all, like he was. Once summer comes, and his uncle and auntie and all of them sit down with the nob and see his good manners and the way he makes Gimli laugh, they'll like him too. 

He sweeps the garage, and lies to his uncle, and waits for summer.

Everything is always easier, in the summer.


	6. It's What You Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Legolas just wants someone to love him enough to _stay_.

Haldir watches him change out of his kit, eyes intense, not that Haldir knows any other way to be. 

“You're being rude.” Legolas grits out, annoyed by it. 

“I've seen it before.” Haldir shrugs, quiet and calm, like always. There had been a time he liked that, had wanted that, or at least thought he did. “Must say, my replacement came as a bit of a shock. A Durin. _That_ Durin.” 

Legolas yanks his shirt down over his head, and pulls his hair out of the collar. “You're being stupid. It's not a good look for you.”

“Band t-shirts aren't a good look for you.” Haldir replies, raising his eyebrows at the logo on the shirt. It's not his. He doesn't even know the band. And it's too big for him. But it smells like Gimli and it irritates him when Legolas nicks his things, so he's got it. “Your brothers are worried about you.”

Yes, Legolas thinks, so worried they'd called his ex. He gathers his hair in a queue, and ties it off. Gimli's shirt smells like the garage, more than anything, but then, so does Gimli, when he doesn't reek of grass and sweat after practice or a match. He'd made jokes about it, in the past, called Gimli all sorts of names. “There's nothing to worry about.” He says coolly, packing his kit away neatly. 

“He's a Durin.” Haldir says, like it's enough. 

And it should be.

His family and the Durins don't have a good history. They never have. It wasn't until his father's generation that things stopped being quite so bloody, and had become more of an old hurt, scarred, but still there. 

He doesn't much care anymore, he finds. His mother's dead, and when he put her in the ground, he put something of himself in with her, the part that cared about such stupid things like their damn names. There had been a time, right after, that he'd worried he'd put his whole heart in the ground as well. He hadn't cared for archery or football or even school. He hadn't cared for anything.

He had hurt Haldir, he knew in retrospect. 

There's been times now he wonders if he and Gimli have always been headed towards this, if the way they fought and teased was always going to end in this way. It had felt strange, the first time. But the next day, when Gimli had given him his hoodie, when they'd stood together in the cold, Gimli putting his hands back in the front pocket, their fingers clumsily slipping together in the warmth, that had felt right, when nothing else had. Everything that made them up, their insults and sniping, their rivalry, it changed. The previous undercurrent of disdain is affection now, a strange, foreign kind that slots easily into his chest where it might not have before. 

Some fine strands of hair are trying to escape the queue. He brushes them back behind his ears, and does not look at Haldir as he puts his kit away. 

“Do you really think he's going to stick around?” Haldir asks, as Legolas zips the bag shut. He's very still, Haldir, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He and Legolas have always had similar builds, similar coloring. There's been something in Legolas that liked the familiarity of Haldir's body. Not for narcissism, not really, more like comfort. He knows Haldir. There's no mystery there, just like there's none in his own bed, his own sheets and duvet. 

As alike as they are in looks, they've never been too alike in personality though, and maybe that was always going to be what brought about the end for them. Haldir's too still, too serene. He's never bothered by anything, but nor does he bother with anything. 

Gimli has a stillness as well, but not in the same way. He's still, but only until he finds something he feels like prodding at. It can be anything, can be rugby, or music, or cars. Or Legolas. And Legolas, he's a bit like that too.

Haldir continues, because Legolas doesn't say anything. “He's a Durin. You've seen how that family is. Kíli's father. Their uncle. The Smith men.” 

“Dori Smith's run the jeweler's for longer than we've been alive.” Legolas doesn't even know him, but there's something so cruel in Haldir's dismissal, he can't stand it. 

“Nori Smith's been in prison more years than we've been alive.” Haldir reminds him. “And what about the rest of the lot? That mad one?”

Legolas pulls the tie out and combs his fingers through his hair before trying a plait. “Gimli's not like that.”

“He's a Durin.” Haldir says, like judgment. “Durins don't love anyone but their own.” 

He thinks of their fingers, intertwined inside the pocket of the hoodie.

“Sod off.” He slams the locker shut. “And stay out of my business.” 

Haldir stands, tall and slim like him, on his eye level. It had been easy to kiss Haldir, just a step forward, a tilt of his head. Gimli's more than half a head shorter, and he has to duck down, plan it out, keep his hair back so it doesn't fall into Gimli's eyes. He doesn't like it, claims Legolas' fine hair gets in his beard and stays. It probably does. 

Haldir steps forward, like he wants to kiss Legolas now. He's close, very close, and there's still something there, if he's being truthful. Haldir was his first, his only, until Gimli. They knew each other well, had grown up together. It had been easy, with Haldir. They never even fought. 

“I'm worried about you too.” Haldir says, and Legolas turns away. “You're not the same.”

He moves away, and grabs his bag. “My mother died.” He says, the words still strange and new, even after four months. “What were you expecting?” 

He leaves before Haldir can answer. 

He thinks about messaging his brothers, thinks about sending them something biting and cruel. They're concerned, he knows they are, and they probably mean well, but they have to stop. They have to leave him alone. His father leaves him be, even when Legolas worries him, he gives him he distance he craves. And he lets Gimli stay in his life, without asking questions. 

He wonders if Haldir is right though. Durins don't love easy, his father's always said with a sneer. They love their own, better than anyone else, and they'll turn their back on outsiders in a heartbeat. 

Gimli defended him to Kíli though. 

That has to mean something. 

Right?

Gimli's not in class, and neither is Kíli. He checks his mobile to see if he's missed a message, but he hasn't. Gimli said he'd see him in music. Why wouldn't he say if there was a change in plans? Especially ones involving Kíli.

- _Where are you?_ \- He texts, but he gets no answer. 

After an hour, he stops checking his mobile. 

Gimli's not at his rugby practice either, when Legolas checks. And when he gives in and checks his mobile, there's still no answer. He sends another, rationalizing that Gimli merely missed the alert from his first.

But this one goes unanswered too, until eleven that night, when he's all but given up. 

_-You awake-_ it asks, and he sends back an affirmative. Another message comes, this one telling him to meet Gimli down at the park, if he can sneak out. 

He thinks of Gimli's little house, his room across from his parents', as he walks down the hall, and down the stairs. If any of the servants hear him, they know better than to let on. He walks out the front door, and shuts it quietly, out of courtesy to them. His father has likely taken a sleeping pill with his brandy tonight, and nothing but the apocalypse will wake him now. 

Outside, it's cold and wet with night, the starlight enough to see by. It's a twenty minute walk to the park, and he texts Gimli multiple times along the way, giving him landmarks. He gets little smiley faces and misspelled messages in response, so when he finally arrives, and finds Gimli with his cousins, Kíli, Fíli, and the quiet one, Ori, he's not surprised. They've all been smoking, that much is obvious, but Gimli's not inhibited enough to kiss him in front of them. He just smiles, big and happy, his beard catching the light from the lamps, and Legolas' stomach sinks. 

He's not alright like this, sober when they're not, as Kíli stays silent and Ori stutters through some polite hello, while Fíli raises one unimpressed eyebrow. Fíli was a year ahead of them in school, so Legolas hasn't seen him in almost a year, and it's made a world of difference. Like his brothers, Fíli has become an adult. Beside him, Kíli and Gimli look like adults too, ready for the world in a way he's not. 

After all, Kíli has an apprenticeship lined up, and so does Gimli, most likely. They're not afraid of the future at all. Durin boys never are.

“Hi,” Ori waves, too big, knocking himself off balance a bit. “I don't remember your name. Went to school with your brothers.” 

“Legolas,” he says, and Ori nods. 

“Right,” he nods. “Right, Legolas. That's it.” He takes a hit off the pipe Fíli passes to him, and blows a smoke ring into the night air, grey in the darkness. “Hello.” 

Fíli and Kíli snicker, not unkindly, but not too friendly either. He sits beside Gimli, the wet grass soaking into his jeans a bit. Gimli makes no move to touch him, and he feels more adrift than before, among them. He's not like them, and it shows, in the way they talk amongst themselves and ignore him. Even Gimli forgets him, laughing with his cousins over stories he doesn't know. 

When the pipe comes to him, he shakes his head. 

Fíli says something to his brother when he does, something nasty, to judge from the way he laughs, but Kíli doesn't. He pushes at Fíli's head, says something Legolas can't hear, but he hears Fíli's reply. “What, you too now? Am I the only one who remembers he's a damn Greenleaf?” 

“No,” Legolas says, miserable now. “I remember too.” 

Fíli licks his lips and watches blankly as Legolas stands, brushing himself off. “What, you offended now?”

“No.” He's not, not really. But he can still hear Haldir in his head, his spiteful words, and now he's got proof that maybe he's right, maybe Gimli doesn't care that much. Or if he does, maybe he's all too ready to break it off with Legolas when he decides it's too much trouble. 

When his mother died, he'd felt nothing. Nothing at all. Just the big open space within, where she had been and no longer was. He hadn't been particularly sad. He hadn't felt anything. When he'd looked at her body, in the morgue, he'd just been distant. There was his mother, on the metal table. She was dead. 

It hadn't been until after the funeral, on the way to the wake, that he'd thought, _Mother will be pleased Elrond came, he never comes to this sort of thing, she'll want to-_

And that was when it hit him. 

Mother wouldn't know Elrond came to her funeral. Because she was dead.

Things had just stopped, within. Archery, football, getting out of bed. What was the point?

And then Gimli Durin had happened, again. Like he had since primary school, when he'd dunked Legolas' hair in the blue paint during art. Gimli had always been something happening to him, mostly bad, or annoying, but. Well. 

This is something he'd of liked to have had her for. She could have told him what this meant, this confusing tangle of right and proper and want. 

He's halfway out of the park when Gimli catches up to him, still glassy-eyed, but focused on him, as he grabs his elbow. 

“Let's take a walk.” Gimli won't take no for an answer, even if Legolas had wanted to say no. 

The cold clears Gimli's head it seems, and he starts to hum, deep and clear, into the night air. The humming becomes a song, an old folk song Legolas has heard before, but can't remember the words to. Even if he did, he doesn't have the voice for it. Legolas is a tenor, and Gimli is a bass. The song only goes as high as a baritone, and Legolas can't pitch his voice so low. 

It feels oddly fitting of the situation. No matter how hard they try, he and Gimli just can't find a middle to meet in, when it comes to anybody but the two of them. 

The song finishes, or maybe Gimli gets bored with it, and the silence lies between them, something that's never been there before. They've always been able to talk to each other, even when it was just hurling insults. 

“Are you and Haldir still together?” Gimli asks, and just like that, the emptiness between them fills, with something a bit more familiar than the affection they've had. Legolas is angry all over again, his frustration from Haldir, from his brothers, from Gimli, just up and leaving in the middle of the day with his damn cousin, it all rushes back up to the forefront of his mind, pushes away the sadness and fear. “Only you two looked awfully close, today. In the locker room.”

“What were you doing in there?” He asks, all too aware he's making himself look guilty. 

“Telling the coach I wouldn't be at practice. Had to go to the garage right after.” He's not being particularly accusatory, or even angry. It's not what Legolas would have expected, had he thought of this scenario. If he'd seen Gimli with someone the way he'd seen Legolas and Haldir, he'd be furious, he knows. He'd be cold and cruel and spiteful, but Gimli is calm. “Are you then?”

“Do you care?” Legolas hates himself, how he sounds. He feels like a child, selfishly clinging to both toys when he knows he can only have one. Haldir's affection is safe and steady though, and Gimli's isn't. Gimli may well decide to leave, might be doing it now. “Do you care at all?”

Gimli nods, hands in his hoodie pocket. “I do.” He looks at Legolas out of the corner of his eye, a little red-eyed, but perhaps more sober than Legolas gave him credit for. “If you're still with him, we're done.”

“That easy?” Legolas sneers, a little hurt. A lot hurt. When he and Haldir had ended, Haldir had simply nodded and said he understood. Now Gimli too is saying he will so easily let Legolas go, like he's not worth holding on to. 

“No, you stupid prat, not that easy.” Gimli all but growls. “But I won't share. Especially not with fucking Haldir. Durins don't share. Either you're with me, just me, or not at all, alright?” He stops, in the middle of the pavement, and looks up at Legolas, hard and unyielding. Just like a Durin. He never would have liked it, before. He never would have liked someone so clearly staking a claim on him, but then, he'd never needed that kind of anchor before. He'd been arrogant and young, and he's still young, but he understands now that death doesn't care about the right order of things, the deserving and undeserving. Everyone dies. Even Greenleafs. Even mothers, when their children still need them. 

Now Gimli looks up at him and waits and Legolas understands this too, why it's so important to love like this, like Durins. Because the people you love might be gone tomorrow, might go to prison, might die, might go away to war and come back wrong. So you love them as hard as you can while they're there, before the love has nowhere to go. 

“I don't want you to share me.” He says, the words lingering in the air like smoke rings, tangible things, waiting. “I want you to love me.” And that too sounds selfish and childish and wrong, and he's ashamed he said it, until Gimli reaches forward, and takes his hand. They're a bad fit here too, Gimli's hands broad and rough, Legolas' long and slim, but it only takes a bit of effort to make it work. 

“Yeah, alright.” Gimli nods, and Legolas hopes he really is as sober as he's acting, that this isn't a false promise. “Yeah, I can manage that.”


	7. Like You're Supposed To

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo and Thorin and Frodo, and what an odd trio they must make, Bilbo thinks, when the neighbors see them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N Lapin is also conveniently located at [The March Rabbit](http://themarchrabbit.tumblr.com/). Just click the Fandom tag on your left and you won't have to see me have epic meltdowns. That Tumblr is good for prompt submissions, questions, and private criticisms if you like. I don't mind. I just like company.

“Mr. Thorin gave me a car, see?” Frodo holds the little thing up for Bilbo's inspection. “It's blue, I told him I like blue, so he got me a blue car. He fixes real cars, you know, down at the garage on Beryl Road, and he says if you had a car, we could come see him, but I told him you can't drive, so he gave me this car.”

Bilbo shakes his head over the stew he's making. Thorin's advances have never been subtle, to say the least, but this is just ridiculous. “I doubt that car will need much work, love.” 

Frodo shakes his head very seriously. “Mr. Thorin says it needs to have the wheels rotated every day, and if he misses lunch at the pub, you have to come down to the garage and get it done.” He's quite set on it, Bilbo can see, and he sighs, choosing to focus on the stew instead. 

He and Thorin are going to have to discuss this eventually, he knows. He'll be responsible, and tell him quite nicely that he just doesn't have the time for this sort of thing right now. That he has obligations now. Has to be a parent, even though he hardly knows how. The sentiment is appreciated though, he thinks he should say, very much so. Thorin is handsome, if not a little wilder than the village knows how to handle, but Bilbo doesn't mind that. He's a little too proud, and quick to temper from what he's heard from the lads down at the Pony, but he's charming too, and responsible. 

And kind, he thinks, watching Frodo play quietly. Good with children, better than Bilbo even. Frodo likes him now, his little heart completely won over by the time they'd finished breakfast. He can understand that, he supposes. 

Oh, what is he thinking, he can't say any of that. Thorin will see it as encouragement to try harder, not a dismissal. 

Frodo shows him the car again, while he hovers around him. The boy likes to stay close still, and if sometimes it's a little aggravating to have a small child underfoot, the aggravation fades when he cares to recall just why he does it. “I like Mr. Thorin.” He says, running the car over the counter. 

“Yes,” Bilbo says, spooning out a small portion of the stew for him. “I do too, I'm afraid.” 

When Thorin comes in for lunch the next afternoon, he puts the little blue car in front of him with his water, glaring. “Using a child is a bit low, don't you think?”

“Not really, no.” Thorin replies, clearly unashamed. “Am I allowed chips today?”

“Absolutely not.” Bilbo snaps waspishly, irritated with him and his infuriating . “Don't think I don't know you get chips from that cart on Hyacinth.” 

Too late, he realizes what he sounds like, but still, Thorin needs to stop eating like a student. It worries at Bilbo in the oddest moments, like when he's making supper for Frodo and himself, forcing Frodo to eat his vegetables. He wonders what Thorin's having, if he's eating with his sister and his nephews, or if he's taking supper down at the Pony with the rest of the union, where there's too much grease and cheap beer. 

Thorin sighs good-naturedly, settling back in the booth. “Fíli or Kíli, and what was the bribe?” 

Bilbo scribbles some nonsense on his notepad, to look busy and keep his eyes from meeting Thorin's. “Kíli. Five biscuits.” And two more he'd stuffed in his pocket when he thought Bilbo wasn't looking. 

Thorin huffs. “He'd of settled for four.” When Bilbo just glares, Thorin apparently takes the opportunity to invade Bilbo's personal space, and take him by the hand so he can press a kiss to his knuckles. It's old-fashioned and public, and Bilbo would be furious at the cheek if his heart would just stop beating so hard. “And if you're so concerned with my health, why don't you monitor it a bit more closely?”

It's just not fair, Bilbo thinks. “Thorin,” he protests, pulling away. “I don't have time for this. I've got Frodo now, I barely have time to sleep.” It's true, very much so, but his logic never seems to work too well around Thorin.

“You could bring him around as well.” Thorin wheedles, and really, Bilbo thinks he chooses his lunchtime knowing the Green Dragon will be in a lull, so he can have Bilbo to himself. “Fíli, Kíli, and the other lads all grew up in the garage. They turned out alright.” 

Bilbo just looks at him, because that is a blatant lie.

“They're not as bad as all that.” Thorin says, in response to the unsaid disagreement. “They're good lads.”

“They are.” Bilbo agrees reluctantly, watching the door out of the corner of his eye. He needs to get to work, he knows, before someone notices him just standing here. “I'm not comfortable with him around that lot though, and you know why.” Thorin's face hardens, but Bilbo's not so gone on him he's ignorant to the less savory aspects of the union and its members. “What do you want today, then?” He asks, tired of it all. “The soup is minestrone, you don't like it.” 

“You're not going to let me have the bacon, are you?” Thorin asks, sitting back in the booth. 

Bilbo says, before he thinks of the implication, “You eat entirely too much bacon.”

God, he thinks, why does he keep encouraging him? Thorin just smirks now, and if he wasn't so bloody handsome when he did it, Bilbo would be tempted to just, well. To do something. He's not really sure what. 

He's saved from making any decision one way or the other when Glóin comes in, striding directly over to Thorin, and giving Bilbo a look that tells him to make himself scarce. He's grateful for the chance to escape to the bar, and put in Thorin's lunch order to Cook, and then he makes himself busy getting the tables ready, giving them the pretense at privacy. The Green Dragon is only so big though, and he hears enough to know it's at least not union business, but a problem with Glóin's son. 

Oh dear, he thinks. He's been wondering when this will get out, and it looks like now. 

Gimli and Legolas have been seeing each other for quite a bit now, to judge by how often he's seen them together in the village. Kíli hasn't been his only late-night grocery store find, and that one had been a bit more than Frodo needed to see, both of them smelling of smoke and shifting guiltily. Honestly, he remembers having a bit more discretion in his day. 

“I don't like it,” he hears Glóin insist. “Neither does his mother. And that stupid stuck-up ponce, you know he's only allowing it to cause trouble for us, you just know it.”

Thorin doesn't respond the way he expects, and it gives him pause. “The boy lost his mother.” It's the way he says it, so sad and far away, and it's only then Bilbo remembers that Thorin's mother had died when he was young too, back when they were in school together. Thorin had been an arrogant prat then, still is, in some ways, but after she had died so suddenly, he had quieted, gone somber and still, like a light had been turned out in him. 

Oh, Bilbo thinks, his heart squeezing. 

“And I'm sorry for it. But what does it have to do with Gimli?” He's really angry, Bilbo sees. Or maybe not anger, exactly. Upset. As though it really matters anymore. Greenleafs and Durins have kept their feud civil for awhile. Bilbo's father barely remembered the last time one had actually hurt another, and that had been a pub fight back when Bungo had been a boy. And no one had even died. 

“Thranduil seems to think Gimli does the boy good.” Thorin signals for Bilbo to get him another drink, but Glóin refuses when he asks. 

“No,” Glóin says, and even when Thorin insists, he puts him off. “Greenleaf put Nori in prison, Thorin, or have you forgotten that?”

Thorin's patience, often tenuous at best, seems to wear thin. “Nori put himself in prison.” He snaps, his tone harsher than Bilbo likes. “The boys will do as they like. If you try to stop him, he'll just want to see him more.”

Bilbo wanders away again, as Glóin argues his point more forcefully, voice too low for Bilbo to hear. Thorin's growing angrier too, handsome face drawn down into a scowl. They keep it quiet though, a very Durin trait, and Bilbo's grateful. He doesn't need trouble, not as more patrons filter in. 

The Green Dragon's only so big, but it's why Bilbo has a job. It's easier with just one person running back and forth, not everyone crowded around the bar ordering, talking on top of each other. By the time he sees Glóin stomp off in a huff, all the tables are full, and he has no more time for Thorin and his ridiculous flirting. 

Still, he finds his mind elsewhere as he works. 

He gets Frodo from school, and lets him run ahead to talk to his friends, two other little boys from their neighborhood. He's getting better, finally, and that's all Bilbo can ask for at this point. He's been pushed to his breaking point too often in the past months, going from being a comfortable bachelor to a surrogate parent overnight, finding that even a sweet-tempered child like Frodo could be enough to drive him to tears of frustration sometimes. The first few months had been too much, almost, and yet, when another cousin with her own children had offered to take him, he had found himself refusing, unable to bear the idea of Frodo anywhere else. 

So he supposes it's all alright, or if not, it will be eventually. 

“They're easier, at this age,” a voice says from his left, and he's almost surprised to see Thorin. Almost. He's holding a canvas shopping bag in one hand, the other in his pocket. “Once they turn twelve or so, they turn in devil creatures.” 

“Do they?” Bilbo asks, watching Frodo skeptically. “I can't see Frodo releasing geese into the middle of the village during the village meetings.” 

“They were all punished thoroughly for that one.” Thorin replies good-naturedly, even as he shakes his head. “And you never know. Fíli was a sweet lad for a time there.” 

“A very short time, I would think.” Bilbo watches Frodo even as he speaks, and sometimes, he wishes it weren't so natural to be like this with Thorin. He's not a good choice, wasn't even one before Frodo, but Bilbo had never seen anything wrong with a little harmless flirting then. But when he found himself missing Thorin, he'd known they had gone beyond it. 

Frodo likes him, there's that. And he'd helped raise his own nephews, everyone knew, after what had happened to their father. 

But it's never just one Durin, like many a spouse had learned over the years in their village. He's heard Glóin's own wife complaining to her ladies club, on Tuesday nights, how it feels like she married the whole clan, and this is the grain of salt he takes with his affection for Thorin. 

Because with Thorin comes Dís and her boys, troublemakers of a harmless sort at least. The Smith boys, including Nori Smith, notorious in the village, none of them quite escaping their mother's shadow, though she's long dead of her own vices. Dwalin Fundin, well-known for being the size of a house and covered in tattoos, even better known for his hot temper and tendency to start fights. The Donnelly boys, including Bofur and his nasty habit of breaking people's teeth when they started in on his cousin. Bifur, the one everyone avoided. Went to Afghanistan, came back mad, they say, and he shakes around crowds now and he won't talk to anyone. 

And it's not as though the union has ever had a spotless reputation.

It's not a good environment for Frodo.

But neither is it just being the two of them, the boy lonely and in need of more adults, and women at the very least. The rest of their family is no good company either now, their noses out of joint still from when Bilbo told them all quite firmly that none of Frodo's inheritance was up for grabs. It still put his teeth on edge, that grown adults would try to rob a _child_.

Ahead, Frodo giggles with the other boys about something. 

Beside him Thorin smiles, and his heart thrills at the sight. If Thorin is usually handsome, he's devastating when he smiles. He was when they were boys too. 

“Why doesn't it bother you, Gimli and Legolas?” He finds himself asking, even though he's sure he's already worked it out. He and Thorin hadn't liked each other much in school, Thorin a bit older than him, and more like Fíli and Kíli than he probably likes to admit, Bilbo a bookworm who hadn't been impressed by Thorin's posturing. “It bothers Glóin.”

“Bothers him more that Gimli stood up to him.” Thorin shrugs, his leather jacket making a creaking noise. Bilbo's always loved the smell of leather, and that, combined with Thorin's cologne, has him thinking inappropriate thoughts for a walk home, with children in front of them. “Those boys have been dancing around each other for years. Dís and Bofur had a bet going.” He chuckles. “Bofur won.” 

“I'm sure I don't want to know.” Bilbo says, with a good-natured sigh. “Legolas' mother told me the same thing. Whenever Gimli stopped teasing Legolas, Legolas would throw a fit until he did.”

This makes Thorin laugh, and before Bilbo quite knows how he's done it, he's gotten Bilbo to take his arm while they walk down the pavement, the boys not far ahead. He should pull away, he knows very well, and the gossip will be fierce in the neighborhood tonight. But Thorin is steady, and warm, and it's a nice day. 

“I don't know if you remember, but my mother died when I was his age.” Thorin says, more seriously. “It's not an easy age to lose a parent at. The boy wasn't holding up well. Anyone could see.” Bilbo nods in agreement. Legolas had been suffering, but he hadn't known the boy well enough to help. “He's better now. I don't hate Greenleaf so much I'll deny his boy the thing that makes him smile.” 

If Bilbo leans on his shoulder a little now, that's their business. 

“I'm good with kids.” He says, quietly, still serious. “Dís is willing to write me a letter of recommendation, she says, if it means you'll put an end to my moping. And I can even cook, given enough motivation.”

It's such a pleasing image, the idea of Thorin in his home, with him and Frodo. So domestic and simple. And he's lonely, he can't deny that. He needs adult company, but Thorin and the union appear to be the only ones looking for his. He can't just let Frodo grow up in isolation, and if the Durins are a bit much, at least they stick together.

There is the problem of what would happen if they found it couldn't work. He can't do that to Frodo, can't bring another person into his life who will only leave again. 

He's very torn. 

A neighbor spots them, as one of Frodo's little friends leaves them. Her raised eyebrows take in the sight with no small amount of judgment, and he knows for sure it'll be all over the village by nightfall, that he was seen with Thorin Durin. He can expect a visit from his less good-intentioned cousins, and he can expect some from his well-intentioned ones too. The idea will be raised again that perhaps it would be better if Frodo were somewhere else, with someone else.

It would all be easier, with someone to fall back on, and he won't pretend Thorin doesn't wield powerful influence in the village. 

And Bilbo is so tired of pushing him away. 

“Mister Thorin!” Frodo wheels around, his other friend gone now too. “Did you fix my car? I sent it with Uncle Bilbo today so you could, because I had to go to school.”

Thorin smiles down at him, and lets go of Bilbo to scoop up Frodo with his free arm. He's big enough, and Frodo is small enough, he makes it look easy. Frodo's delighted by it, grabbing on to him without shame, as Thorin digs in his pocket, canvas bag still in the crook of his elbow. The car is pulled out, and Frodo takes it back happily, spinning the tyres on his palm, making car noises. 

He's going to end up staying for dinner, Bilbo knows, as another neighbor sees. 

“I have soldier men at home, they're green, and they drive the car,” Frodo is saying.

“Do they now? When I was a soldier, I rode in a great big truck called a Jackal,” 

Frodo stares wide-eyed, as Thorin regales with him stories of a far away desert, and Bilbo comes to walk beside them. They must make quite a picture, he thinks.

He wonders what the neighbors think, when Thorin leaves the next morning, off to work with a kiss on Bilbo's forehead. 

He doesn't care, he decides.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember, spelling errors, grammar errors (hahaha let's talk about my awful grammar and what little school I attended), Brit picks, plot points or lack thereof, feel free! I will not get mad. I will not let other reviewers trash you. I will listen.


	8. Come Sunday Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thorin and Bilbo, and everything they entail in this life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I need to sleep, I say, as I open a new document and order another chai tea and keep writing. 
> 
> They know I like chai and vanilla rooibos, but not green. Lord, I need to go home and go to bed. 
> 
> Some small notes being that Thorin was in the war known in the U.S. as the Gulf War, not the more recent one. (I place him in his mid to late thirties in this fic) (Edit: Jesus, and I kept writing Afghanistan anyway)
> 
> Whole chapter written to [I Don't Want To Be A Bride](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rshm6hWkxVA) by Vanessa Carlton. Pretend you never heard "A Thousand Miles". Pretend pop music doesn't exist. Listen to this. It makes me close my eyes and smile and sing along every time. It's soft and sweet and mature, and yes, I relate a lot at times.

He can't sleep. 

In the bed, Bilbo is dead to the world, one arm tucked under the pillow, the other curled against his chest, his bare back exposed to Thorin where the covers pulled down when he climbed out. He wants a cigarette, but he doesn't have one on him, and the corner store is too far. He's trying to quit anyway. He can't be smoking around Frodo, or have the smoke on his clothes. The boy might have asthma, Bilbo thinks. He gets winded when he runs with his friends.

And he's really too small for his age. Thorin wouldn't doubt there's a problem somewhere. 

He really wants a cigarette. Probably because he can't sleep. 

On the bed, Bilbo shifts, and rolls to his back. He blinks blearily at Thorin, and stretches a bit. The sight is enough to entice him back, crawl on top of him and kiss him fully awake. He's waited so long for this, to have Bilbo right here, to be here with him. He opens under Thorin easily, his arms coming up, one to wrap around Thorin's neck, the other to cup his jaw, slide back into his hair, fingers raking through. 

It's only been an hour or so, but he wants him again already, and he pulls away to push the covers back the rest of the way, to show Bilbo's body. He doesn't have to nudge his thighs apart. Bilbo parts them for him without being asked, one leg coming up to hook around his waist, pull his hips down. He moves down to Bilbo's neck, enjoying the skin there, the way his attentions make Bilbo gasp and tug at his hair harder, almost painfully. 

“Thorin,” he gasps, into the silent room, and Thorin makes a sound in response, careful of the noise level. Frodo has a some kind of sound machine to help him sleep at night, so he's not likely to overhear, but best to be careful anyway. “You have to work in the morning,”

“My garage, I can be late if I want.” He reminds him, one hand dragging down to test him. He's still loose and wet from earlier, but it never hurts to be careful. He lets go, Bilbo protesting, his fingers still in Thorin's hair, over his scalp teasingly. Everything is where they left it, and he grabs another condom and the lube, careful of Bilbo when he slides a finger in. He makes a pleased sound, his back arching just a bit under Thorin's wide palm. 

He can't put in words how much he loves Bilbo here, like this. The way he fits in Thorin's hands, god, he's so perfect. He wishes he'd known what he knows now when they were in school, all those years ago, wishes he could knock some sense into himself, tell himself that the titchy little bookworm he'd never noticed was so much more than what he seemed. They could have been like this for years, he could have had Bilbo by his side for so long, could have been there when Frodo came, helped him when he needed it the most. 

And he could have had Bilbo with him when he needed him, when his brother died. When his mother died. His father. When the boys' father wouldn't stop fucking up. When he'd finally died. When they'd shipped him off to Kuwait. 

Bilbo makes a breathy noise when he pushes back in, hooking one of his legs over his arm, the other tightening around his waist. He's got a good angle like this, for both of them, and it only takes a minute for Bilbo to start moving with him, his nails leaving more marks on Thorin's back, fresh ones on top of the ones he left earlier. The hand in his hair tightens, moves his head down, to Bilbo's neck, and he takes the direction easily. He's sensitive there, and nothing makes him keen more than if Thorin puts his mouth to good use there while he's fucking him. 

He presses hard on Thorin's head when he gets close, and Thorin loves it, loves Bilbo being so open with his wants in bed. He never lies to Thorin, never lets him keep on when something doesn't feel good, or he's not happy. He hates being lied to. 

“Oh,” Bilbo sighs, breathless, as he comes between them. “Oh, come on then,” he urges, digging his nails in, Thorin biting back a groan at the feel. “Please, Thorin,” 

He could last longer, could hold it back, but he doesn't want to hurt Bilbo just to prolong his own pleasure. He inhales sharply, focuses on the feel of Bilbo, how good it is, how easy, and just like that, he comes inside him. 

For a second, he lingers, tired suddenly. He gets himself together quickly, and pulls out, removing the condom carefully and tying it off. Bilbo's got a bin by the nightstand, and he drops it in there, taking the time to stretch his shoulders out. Bilbo's hand, cool and smooth, traces up his spine, following the tattoos on his back. 

“Better?” Bilbo asks, yawning noisily.

“A bit.” He is tired now, more than he was before. Or maybe just more relaxed. “I see what Glóin was on about, now. Quitting, I mean.” 

“You don't have to.” Thorin stretches one last time, than turns, and slides down until he's on his elbow. He pulls the covers back up over them, and settles down on the pillow. Bilbo is back in his old position, an arm tucked under, and the other drawn up, but when Thorin lies down, he reaches out to play with his hair. It's sticking to his back a bit uncomfortably, his damp skin not mixing well with its coarseness. His scalp itches too from it, and he scratches idly, an unexpected yawn catching him as he does so. Bilbo winds the lock around and through his fingers, the black a contrast against his pale skin in the moonlight coming in through the cracked curtains. “Quit, I mean. You don't have to.” 

“Best get it done now.” Thorin reasons. “If I'm going to be around, I can't have it on my clothes, or in my hair. Not good for the boy.” 

“Or you, even.” Bilbo points out. “But thank you.” He kisses the lock of hair, and releases it, the piece holding the curl a bit. It'll straighten back out by morning, to its natural soft wave, or when he brushes it. “You're too good to me.”

“I should have quit a long time ago. I didn't start until Kuwait. Had to do something.” Something about what he says makes Bilbo smile, and he raises an eyebrow. “What?”

“I was just remembering, when you and Dwalin came back in your uniforms. Your hair was so short.” He seems amused by it. “I remember thinking you looked handsome, and I disliked you so much then, I was quite put out by it.” 

Thorin chuckles into the pillow. “Were you? I'm sorry.” 

“You were such a prat.” Bilbo admonishes. “You really were, you and Dwalin both. You were so full of yourselves.” 

Thorin leans in and steals a kiss, staying close when they part. “Well, I have it on good authority we were quite handsome.” Bilbo groans quietly, his laughter muffled as Thorin keeps kissing him. He's tired, but not that tired, not when he has Bilbo's warm body against his, but Bilbo protests, pushing against him. 

“No, not a chance. I'm already going to be sore in the morning. You're done, do you understand me?” 

It turns out he's really too tired to do anything anyway, his body giving a half-hearted try before calling it quits, so he just kisses him soundly and goes back to his own pillow. “That was a long time ago.” He says, and it was. Almost twenty years now, since he wore a uniform. He had joined at eighteen, just in time for them to ship him off to Kuwait, served for less than a handful of years, and then come home, having seen enough of the world and war. 

“It was, wasn't it?” Bilbo muses. “A long time ago? I was at uni while you were in a war.” His face turns serious, contemplative. “It's hard to imagine, for me. I was worrying about my exams, you were trying not to die.” 

“We both succeeded well enough.” Thorin says, not bothered. Bilbo in war doesn't bear thinking about, so he doesn't. He likes the idea of Bilbo safe in school, with his books and his tea. Safe and sound, waiting to go home to the village, waiting for right now, where he's safe and sound in Thorin's arms. “I love you.” 

Bilbo stills beside him, and for a second, he thinks he's spoken too soon, but then he's laughing, muffling the sound with his hand. When he finally gets himself under control, his eyes are bright, and he leans over and kisses Thorin lightly. “Here I thought I was absolutely mad, thinking I was moving too fast.” He smiles, and says, quietly, like a secret, “I love you too.” 

Thorin wrestles him back down, kisses him soundly. They're really not up for anything else, either of them, but it's nice to kiss, to be comfortable with one another. He lets him go eventually, and Bilbo half-buries his face in the pillow as he falls back asleep. 

Thorin follows quickly this time, and only wakes again when the sunlight breaks through the damned crack in the curtains. Once he's awake, he's awake, so he gives up on the idea of a lie-in, and finds something clean. He's got a few things here now, more for practicality than inclination to move in, not just yet. He showers, and cleans his teeth, then dresses and gets his hair back in an elastic. Once he looks orderly, he makes his way into the kitchen, where he finds he's not the only one up.

Frodo is small, he always notices. 

Frerin had been small too, as a child. It had been his lungs, in the end, that had finished him. He'd died hooked up to a machine that breathed for him, until it finally couldn't. 

He wants his morning cigarette, but he settles for tea. 

“And what'll you have, lad?” He asks, Frodo looking up from the two new cars he'd brought him. 

Hopefully, Frodo suggests, “Oatmeal?” 

Thorin nods. “I can manage that.” He does so, and serves it with enough brown sugar Bilbo would murder him, but it doesn't hurt to give the boy a bit more to grow on, and he makes sure he eats a banana too, and downs a whole glass of the juice Bilbo buys him with his vitamins. 

“They're shaped like dinosaurs.” Frodo informs him, holding up a purple one. “What's this one?”

“Can't say I know.” Thorin replies, scrolling through the news on his mobile. “Your uncle probably does though.” 

“Uncle Bilbo knows lots of things.” Frodo agrees, eating his oatmeal. “He reads.” 

“I know.” Thorin raises his eyebrows at the boy. “He used to get in trouble in school. He'd always have a book under the desk.” He remembers that now, that Bilbo had almost never been without a book. He'd never understood it then. It wasn't until Kuwait, when he was bored out of his skull, that he finally understood the appeal of books. “Do you like stories?”

Frodo nods, his mop of curls fuzzy in the morning light. “I like books.” 

Bilbo joins them, wrapped in his dressing gown. It's a lovely idea, to stay with them, but the morning is creeping on, and he needs to get to work. He kisses Bilbo good-bye and ruffles Frodo's hair before he leaves, wishing he could stay longer, could enjoy the peace of their home. “Bring Frodo to the garage today, if you can spare the time.” He offers, when his good-bye kiss turns into three, hidden from Frodo in the foyer. “He'll like it.”

“Who's on shift today?” Bilbo asks, fingers wrapped in Thorin's queue. “Not Bifur?” It's a legitimate question, so Thorin's not offended. He wouldn't want Frodo around him. He's still unpredictable. 

“No. Dwalin, Nori, Fíli and Glóin. Balin will be in to look at the books today.” All appropriate, as long as he warns Nori to behave himself and not swear or make an bad jokes around the boy. “It's fine.”

Bilbo hums in consideration, before he says, “He has been after me to take him, and it'll be a good walk for him.” He takes one more kiss, then shoves at Thorin's shoulder. “Alright then, off with you. The neighbors will start to talk.” He's teasing, but there's real worry in his eyes and the lines of his mouth that he doesn't quite hide.

Thorin frowns, as he steps out the door, looking around. He's never noticed Bilbo's neighbors much, but now, as he walks down the pavement, he sees the thinly veiled disapproval in the eyes of those getting into their cars, or up getting their morning papers. 

He looks back at the little house, where Bilbo and Frodo are, and prays he hasn't made their lives more difficult. 

He knows what he is, to the village. He and the rest are under no illusion as to how they're viewed. They're rough-and-tumble, and unapologetic. The Durin name is a heavy one, and he's bore it proudly, unashamed of their history. They built their way up in this world, earned every bit of what they have now. What did it matter if they got a bit of it by breaking some fingers and making a few threats in the right places? Whose business what that?

Only now, he thinks he's been a great bloody idiot. Bilbo's confessed that his custody of Frodo is tenuous, and could still be revoked. His cousins hadn't made a will or thought to assign guardians to their son, likely never thinking they could both die so unexpectedly, and Bilbo had had to fight hard to get him away from the poisonous relations Frodo had first been placed with. 

His being involved does not look good, does it? Lord, when did he get so stupid? He's got to be more careful about his business, never give them a reason to think he's a problem. If Bilbo loses Frodo because of him, he'll never forgive him. He'll never forgive himself. 

This time, he has to do it right.

Bilbo does end up coming by, that day, with Frodo, when the afternoon sun is high in the sky and the doors are open to let the breeze in. The sunshine on his face, the way it turns his hair lighter and his face warm, it makes Thorin's heart beat hard in his chest, enough that he kisses him there, at the door, careful to keep his blackened hands away from his clothes. 

“Hello,” Bilbo says, smiling and happy and god, he makes Thorin so happy. Please, he prays. He'll do what it takes to keep this, he'll keep everything above board, he'll keep his temper in check, he'll do anything, he will. He'll never give Bilbo reason to doubt him, will prove he's the best choice, for the both of them. That he can be stable and provide like no one else in the whole village. That him, and his family, will do right by the both of them. 

“Hello,” he says back, and hopes he makes him at least half this happy, hopes he's worth it for Bilbo. Hopes he looks at Thorin and feels what he feels, this love that doesn't burn, not in the slightest, but instead wraps its comfortable warmth around every part of him. He hopes, oh, he hopes, and he loves, as Bilbo smiles, and Frodo runs into his legs, demanding to be picked up and carried about the place.

He hopes, and he loves, and he smiles, in the bright sunshine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Criticism. Please. Or if none, comments on what you liked so I know what to play to. Nothing you could say is useless. I love feedback.


	9. Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fíli and Ori and where they are in this world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N The farmer's markets are back up again, so I'm working a lot more, off in the early morning and asleep by like, seven pm. My back hurts a lot, during the spring and summer.

“Jesus Christ Fíli, stop staring like that, you look like a serial killer,” Gimli groans, sitting back in the booth. “I mean it, I could be smoking with Legolas.” He leans over the table, pointing a finger in Fíli's face. “I gave up _sex_ to be here with you, alright?”

“Yeah.” Fíli tries to settle back, tries to look away, but his eyes are drawn back up to the bar. 

Ori is either ignoring him, or hasn't seen them. He's certainly seen the bloke chatting him up. He's tucking his hair behind his ear, smiling down at his napkin where he's clearly been sketching something, the bastard pointing at it and grinning. Probably telling Ori he's talented, brilliant. Everything Fíli's been telling him for years, into the soft skin of his neck that makes him dig his fingers into Fíli's shoulders.

“You're not even listening, are you?” Gimli is staring down idly at his mobile now. Probably texting that Greenleaf prat. Christ, they're already sickeningly domestic. “You two have been split up for what, three months now?”

“He called it a break,” Fíli corrects, the word venomous in his mouth, like it should be. A bloody _break_ that he had consented to like an idiot that had gone from a week to two to a month to now, where Ori is getting picked up in a pub by someone Fíli doesn't know. He hadn't even broken up with him, not really, just let the distance tell Fíli what he didn't want to know. 

He wonders how much more he can drink before he goes over and starts a fight. Probably not much more. 

“Yeah, well, it's been bloody three months, either way.” Gimli eyes his glass, mostly empty now. They both need another, Fíli decides. 

“I'll get the next round,” he volunteers, getting up. 

“Jesus fucking Christ, we're going to get thrown out,” Gimli swears, and follows him. “Fíli, come on, this isn't going to help, you know it, just, we'll go to another place, shit, _Fíli_ -” 

Ori notices him at last, even though there's three people between them, Ori in the corner, between the wall and the bloke sitting beside him. He doesn't say a word, and neither does Ori, his mouth dropping open a little. He's surprised, of course he is, Fíli hadn't said he was coming home, had he? Hoped maybe it would be a nice surprise, the kind they could talk about, could work around at last. 

He raises his eyebrows at Ori, asking him for something. Anything. 

“Fíli, do not start anything, please,” Gimli hisses. “I'm in enough fucking trouble with my parents over Legolas, I do not need your drama too.” 

Ori looks down at his napkin. 

“Nothing to start," Fíli dismisses easily. “Let's go,” 

“Thank you Jesus.” Gimli hurries him towards the door, like he's scared Fíli will change his mind. He very well might. “Come on, we'll go to the Dragon, I think Dwalin and Nori are drinking there tonight with my dad and Uncle Thorin.”

Once they hit the pavement, shrugging their coats back on, and Fíli gets a hit of cold air, his head clears enough to hurt. “Go on then,” he says, shoving his hands in his pocket, feeling his cash. “Go see Greenleaf.”

“Fíli.” 

“You knew, didn't you.” It's not a question. “You all fucking knew he was seeing other people, and you lot just let me keep thinking this was just a break. Right? Because no way you didn't.” He can't decide if he's angry, or just fucking tired of all this shit. Both. 

Gimli groans, and rakes a hand through his hair. “It's not been like you think, alright, so fuck you. He's my friend too, just so we're clear here, Fíli. I'm not going to go running around behind his back and telling you everything he's been getting up to.” 

If Fíli was in a better mood, he'd know Gimli is right, that Fíli doesn't deserve special treatment over Ori, that Gimli's right to not tell him anything. 

He's not though. 

“Fuck you,” he says, getting a cigarette out. “Fuck you, and Kíli, all of you. Fuck the lot of you, and your little Greenleaf bitch -” He's got it lit, but it falls into the gutter when Gimli shoves him, hard enough he stumbles and nearly falls. 

His cousin is done with him, that much is obvious, but he doesn't even care about that. “You're the one who botched it up with Ori, alright? You, no one else, so fuck you, Fíli.” He gets a cigarette of his own out, lighting it with a cheap plastic lighter from the corner store. “I'm going home. Find me when you're not being such an arse.” 

Fíli stands there for a moment, the music from inside filtering out and washing over him as Gimli makes his way down the street, not once looking back. He can't say he's sorry to see him go, or blames him. 

He can't go back in the Pony, not with Ori in there, and he can't go to the Dragon, not with his family and Ori's damn brother there. He can't stay sober either. So, with nothing clear or even well-intentioned in his head, he goes and buys a bottle of rum and a bottle of Coke from the corner store, then finds his way down the streets 'til he hits the bakery. It's closed for the night, Bombur likely already home with his family. Fíli likes Bombur's family, even when he gets roped into babysitting the two little girls who liked to braid his hair. They like Kíli better, of course, because Kíli can put those stupid hair wraps and beads in their hair. 

He goes around to the side of the building, where the staircase is. They're new, the wood fresh-painted from last summer when Bombur paid them in food to do it, and they lead up to a platform with two doors. Fíli picks a step halfway up, and empties half the Coke over the side, then adds the rum to the bottle, turning it over in his hands until it's mixed but won't explode. It's an old trick he and Ori used to do, when it was just the two of them in college, Kíli and Gimli still a year behind, Dwalin's boys already off at uni. They'd sneak off here usually, back when both flats were empty.

Now one is full of books and sketchpads and pencils and charcoal and all of Ori's damn scarves. Fíli had helped him move in, Ori so proud of his job at the library, shelving books, added in with his commission work. He wonders if Ori's getting more now. Probably. He'd just been so happy to move out of Dori's house, get to be on his own, and Fíli hadn't blamed him, though he'd wished Ori would go to uni with him. 

Ori hadn't liked the idea of university though, of going so far from home, and unlike Fíli, he hadn't been afraid to admit it. So Fíli had gone alone, and left Ori behind. He hadn't liked it, had been sure it was how he would lose him. 

He hates it when he's right.

He drinks the rum and coke until the bottle is empty and he's leaning against the railing, enjoying the crisp air and the way the world is now all soft edges and quiet. The stars are bright above them, the sky clear for once, and he remembers the first time he kissed Ori, on his seventeenth birthday. They'd had a family dinner in the garden, and then the adults had wandered off, left all the kids to smoke and drink on their own. 

Ori had brought a date and Fíli had simmered over it until finally, he'd gotten brave enough to start a fight. After, it had been Ori pressing ice to Fíli's jaw, and it had been Ori who had quietly said, while they sat alone in the kitchen, “Either make a move or leave me be, Fíli, but it can't keep on this way, it can't,” and Fíli had kissed him then, even though it hurt his split lip. 

He can't remember a time when he wasn't possessive of Ori, when he didn't want Ori all to himself. He hadn't even liked it when Ori was partnered with other people in their classes. And he knows, he really does, that Ori is a person who can pick his own friends, that's he's not Fíli's thing, not his toy. But once he'd had a taste of what he really wanted, that one kiss, he'd lost whatever sense he had. He'd do anything for Ori, give him anything. 

But sometimes, he hadn't been able to give him what he wanted. He hadn't been able to get along with Dori to save his life, hadn't been able to appreciate Ori's books unless they were made into a movie or a show, and even then, Fili had never been able to understand and appreciate them to the depth Ori did. He hadn't been able to stand up to his mother and refuse to go to university, stay here in the village with Ori like he wanted. 

He'd treated Ori badly, in the end, like Ori had nothing better to do than wait around for Fíli. 

Then the last fight, the big fight, the one where Ori had actually demanded something more from Fíli, a real commitment to him and whatever they were and Fíli had told him not to hold his breath, had brushed him off. Fíli had been so angry about his mother pushing him and his uncle letting her and now Ori was on his back, and he'd snapped at him. He'd made Ori cry, made him pull his knees to his chest on the couch and tell Fíli, “I think we need a break.” 

At the time, it had made sense. They needed some time apart to cool off, was all. And so what if Fíli had left Ori's flat and hidden in the garage and cried like a child, when the only safe place in the world had been where Thorin was? He was just angry. He was always so damn angry. And Ori hated it.

And now Ori won't speak to him and lets strangers in pubs chat him up and he doesn't think about Fíli at all when Fíli loves him so much, has since as long as he could remember. 

He takes a swig of the rum straight from the bottle, drunk enough now that he doesn't mind the taste or the burn. 

“Fíli, what are you doing?” 

He opens his eyes to see Ori, the scarf his brother knitted him when they were fifteen tied around his neck, his mittens on too. He still looks like he's all of fifteen, despite being nineteen now, just like Fíli. They'd grown up together, but he'd never been like a brother, sweet Ori, only three months younger but still small compared to him and Kíli and Gimli. 

“So when you said break,” Fíli says, putting the bottle down, hoping it stays on the steps and doesn't tumble off. “What you really meant was that you wanted to break up with me. Only you couldn't say that, could you? You said break, and decided to just let me work it out for myself that you didn't want me anymore.” 

“Fíli, you're drunk.” Ori helps him stand. “You can't sit out here when you're drunk, it's too cold.” 

“Christ, do you ever stop,” he complains, even as he lets Ori lead him up the rest of the steps, the rum left behind on the step. “Do you ever just fucking _stop_ taking care of me?”

“No.” They're in the flat from one blink to the next, Ori sitting him down on the couch. It's old, Nori's cast-off, and their mother's before that. It's blue, with a pattern of white roses on it, and Fíli finds himself fascinated, using his finger to trace the petals of the one by his thigh. Ori hands him a glass of tap water, and makes him drink it down in between feeding his cat and checking on his fish. 

The cat in question, a huge orange tomcat, makes his way over to Fíli, kneading his thigh through his jeans. “Hello Pumpkin,” he greets, scratching him under the chin. “Miss me?” He'd always been the stupid cat's favorite. He'd been the one to find him in the river, half-drowned and so dirty they'd thought he was grey at first.

“He has.” Ori is adjusting something on the tank. It's a saltwater aquarium, big and beautiful and taking up a whole corner. Fíli had helped him build it, Ori eager for pets of any kind after living under Dori's roof, Dori who hated anything that didn't walk on two legs. 

“I bet.” Fíli let the cat rub against him, before Pumpkin got bored and wandered away, back to wind his way around Ori's legs. “Do you?” 

Ori sighs. “Fíli.”

“Guess not. What was his name?”

“Fíli, please stop.” 

“Doesn't even matter, I suppose, long as he's not me, right? It's just me you're tired of.” 

“ _Fíli_.” Ori has his arms crossed over his chest, clutching himself like he can't bear it.

He's too much, really. “When we were fifteen, you had this hat. It was blue.” Ori says something, but Fíli forgets it as soon as he says it. He overdid it with the rum, he knows. “I always wanted to kiss you when you wore that hat. 'Course, I always wanted to kiss you, so what else was new?” His eyelids are heavy, so he lets them fall closed. “I always want to kiss you. It's unfair, you know. You're just unfair. I don't want anyone but you.” 

He opens his eyes, and somehow, he's got his head in Ori's lap, Ori raking his fingers through his hair. “Fíli, go to sleep. You'll feel better.” 

“Fucking love you, you know.” 

Ori is crying, he realizes. He made him cry again.

“But I just keep fucking up, don't I?” Because he does. It's all he does. Failed out of uni, ruined his relationship with Ori. Can't do anything right. 

He closes his eyes, and when he opens them, it's morning and he has to piss like crazy. He's in Ori's flat, he sees, and swears a blue streak at himself as the memories come back to him in the bathroom. Half the night after his brilliant decision to get pissed on Ori's steps is a blur, but unfortunately, the distinct image of Ori crying is pretty clear in his mind. 

Great. 

He lingers in the bathroom, washing his face and borrowing Ori's toothbrush to get his mouth clean. His head aches a bit, and he's thirsty, but he's had worse hangovers. 

Ori is awake when he comes back, sitting up in the bed in the corner of the one-room flat. His hair is a mess, and he's blinking blearily, but it's one of Fíli's favorite ways to see him. He climbs out of bed and shuffles to the bathroom while Fíli starts the tea and pours himself a glass of water. By the time Ori comes out, he's got the water boiling, and he pours Ori a cup, placing it in front of him on the table. 

Ori stares at it blankly for a second, then inhales and seems to wake up a bit more. 

“I'll make breakfast,” Fíli says, after he's poured himself a cup. 

Ori nods, taking a seat at the little table beside the kitchen area. Fíli had built it for him out of scrap wood, and carved a heart with their names in the middle on the underside where no one would see. A secret little valentine, the kind of secret Ori loved. Ori liked private things, little things between them that only they knew. Fíli had tried to give him as many as he could. It's all he was good at it.

He makes over-easy eggs with runny insides like Ori likes and toast. By the time it's done, Ori is a bit more awake, and when Fíli joins him at the table, he's alert enough they're awkward around each other. 

“I'm sorry,” he says, because he should. “I shouldn't have done that, last night.”

“You were upset,” Ori replies, poking at his eggs with the corner of his toast. He likes to soak them in the yolk. 

Fíli shakes his head. “Don't do that. Don't make excuses for me, alright? It was stupid, and I shouldn't have -”

“I didn't want to break up, you know.” 

He blinks. “What?”

Ori shrugs, and takes a bite of his toast. “I wanted a break, but not for why I said.” He sighs, and finishes the toast in two bites while Fíli drinks his tea. He's feeling better now that he has some water in him and some caffeine, but he still needs a shower and clean clothes. And a nap. “I wanted you to stop taking me for granted. To miss me.” 

Fíli frowns. “Were you testing me?” 

Ori shakes his head. “No, that's not...” He bites his lip, and damn him, it still draws Fíli's eye. “That's not what I was trying to do. I just wanted you to...I don't even know. Stop seeing me as something you could always have, even when you weren't paying attention. Because you were, you know. You kept snapping at me all the time, like I had done something wrong just by asking you for an actual promise.”

“Ori, I never meant to do that.” 

“It doesn't matter if you meant to or not, because you did. At that point, I wasn't even sure if you actually wanted me, or if you just hated sharing.” Ori picks at his food, not looking at Fíli. “The thing is, Fíli, I've always loved you. Even when we were little. I still do.” 

For a moment, Fíli just looks at him. Then he leans in, and kisses him. 

Ori turns away, shaking his head. “Fíli, you can't just kiss me and expect that to fix this.” 

“I was never just playing with you. I wasn't using you. I want to be with you.” He doesn't say it to make Ori feel guilty. He says it because it's true, because it's been true for a long time. Before that party, when he turned seventeen and Ori was still sixteen, but already so much older. “I'm sorry.”

He reaches out, and takes Ori's hand. Their fingers intertwine easily, like they always have, and Fíli raises them, kisses Ori's knuckles. 

“Oh.” Ori sounds torn just with that sound, and for a second, Fíli is afraid he's said something Ori doesn't want to hear. “I was trying to make you jealous last night, you stupid bastard, I was, you're the only one I would ever do that for, and you just-”

Kissing Ori is easy, like everything with him is. 

“I just got drunk and sat on your steps,” he says, when they part. “Do you really need me to spell it out for you anymore?” 

Ori shakes his head, says, “No.”

Still, Fíli says, “I love you.” Because Ori deserves to hear it from him sober. He deserves so much more than what Fíli knows how to give, but he still buries his fingers in Fíli's hair and pulls him close as they kiss. He says, “I love you,” and that's enough, it seems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just _really_ like this pairing


	10. If You Don't Believe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Smith boys all have different fathers. All soldiers.
> 
> Ori watches the dragons circling overhead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N Ori is written like an artist. I'm warning you now. I literally just started pouring rum and listening to The Civil Wars and seeing where it went. 
> 
> The Civil Wars song [C'est La Mort](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFg_Lr0ncdg) inspired this. I don't know another song that so accurately hits my heart when it comes to love. The title is from the idea in the song, the French phrase "c'est la vie" (such is life), combined with "c'est la mort" (such is death), saying "where you go, I follow, in life or in death".

The summer Ori and Fíli were eighteen, they spent half of it in a hammock behind the garage, tucked up against one another, usually passing a cigarette or a joint back and forth. It had been a good summer, full of blue skies and golden sunshine filtering through the leaves of the trees the hammock is strung between. 

That's a lie, Ori thinks. It had only been good when he was in the hammock with Fíli. The rest of the summer had been spent arguing with Dori over Fíli and university and the union. And Fíli. So many of the arguments had been about Fíli. He'd been blamed for everything. Ori not wanting to go to uni, Ori choosing to keep his connections to the union. 

When Ori had dared snarl back at Dori that Dori was the only reason they even had any connections to the union, to the Durins, his eldest brother had reeled back like Ori had slapped him across the face. The words had been as good as, Ori supposes now. 

They don't talk about their fathers. 

It's better that way. 

Ori is almost twenty now, and it's too cold to be out here in the hammock again, but here he is, under the stars and the empty branches of the trees. They break up the sky like window panes. He thinks he might draw a picture like that, tree branches as window panes, blocking out the sky from their little world down here. Maybe the trees are protecting them from something. Maybe there are dragons above the trees, circling like sharks, waiting for their chance to dive down and devastate them all. 

He raises a hand up, and starts tracing the idea out, against the navy blue sky, cementing it in his mind until he can get paper and a pen. 

“Oh, I'm sorry,” a voice says, and Ori turns his head to see Bilbo standing there, looking at Ori in mild puzzlement. Everything about Bilbo seems mild, Ori thinks. Or maybe he's like Ori, calm on the outside and turbulent within. “Am I disturbing you?” 

“No,” Ori says, tucking the free arm behind his head. He takes a hit of his joint, then holds it politely out to Bilbo. “Do you smoke?”

“Not since I was your age,” Bilbo replies, but he accepts it anyway. He takes a hit easily, despite what he says, and Ori budges over, makes room. 

“You can hide out with me,” he offers, and Bilbo accepts. Neither of them are very big men, and they share the space easily without overstepping friendly physical boundaries. “It's not so nice when it's like this, is it?”

“No,” Bilbo agrees.

The garage is lit up, and though Ori can't hear what's going on inside, he knows none of it is good. He's better off out here, well out of it. He and Bilbo pass the joint back and forth for awhile, not a long while, but not a short while, before Bilbo finally asks, “So who is he?”

He means Liam, the man inside the garage who everyone is an uproar about. Liam, with his red-blond hair, and his green prison tattoos. He has white shot through his hair now, white and grey, and lines in his face Ori doesn't remember. More tattoos. Not prison ink, at least. There is that. Ori wonders if he should find that comforting. 

“Liam?” Ori asks, just to stall. 

“Yes,” Bilbo replies. 

Ori exhales into the night sky, a perfect smoke ring. Fíli had taught him how, when they were fourteen. There had been a moment, when Fíli was teaching him, Fíli had been so close, his eyes on Ori's mouth, and Ori had thought Fíli meant to kiss him. It had frightened him, and he had turned away. Ori had only been fourteen, not yet understanding who he was, or what it was that existed between him and Fíli.

He'd had a boyfriend, when he was sixteen. His name had been Brian. Brian was on the rugby team, dark-haired and light-eyed, and he'd liked Ori. He hadn't liked Fíli. It had been just before Fíli's seventeenth birthday that Brian had told Ori he was getting tired of competing with some prick Durin who couldn't even manage to come to school most days of the week. That he was damned tired of the way the union boys were giving him trouble for being with Ori, like Ori belonged to Fíli. 

“That's not normal,” he'd said. “And that union? That's dangerous shit, Ori. They're dangerous, that lot.” 

Still, when Fíli had kissed him that night, in the kitchen, the ice pack Ori had been pressing to Fíli's jaw falling out of his hands to the floor, Ori had kissed back. 

Now he blows a smoke ring. 

“Liam is my da,” Ori answers. 

Bilbo is quiet, for a moment, before he says, “But not Dori or Nori's?” 

“No,” Ori says, shaking his head. “No. Dori and Nori's fathers are dead. Náin and Joseph. In the struggle. Died like soldiers. Liam's a soldier.”

Beside him, Ori hears Bilbo lick his lips before he says, “I don't think that man's been in the army for quite awhile, Ori.”

“Not that army,” Ori clarifies. 

Bilbo seems to understand, because he doesn't ask for further explanation. Instead, he asks, “Dori's father was Náin?”

Ori snorts. “Why do you think Thráin Durin took care of our family? And Thorin, even after what happened?” Ori's so tired of the village gossip about his family, about why the Durins took such a shine to the Smith boys. Why else would they, if there wasn't some blood shared? 

“I suppose I knew you must have some connection,” Bilbo acknowledges, with a quiet kind of resolution Ori understands. “I just thought it was none of my business.” 

“If you want to be with Thorin, it's all your business,” Ori says, because right now, high and honest, he knows someone needs to clarify this for Bilbo, someone needs to tell Bilbo that just one Durin in your heart means the rest will take up space as well, will shove and bully their way into the valves and chambers, until they're all that matters. Until you cannot imagine a life without them, and the union, and the shelter they all provide from the circling dragons. 

Bilbo is quiet again, for a long time. The lights in the garage burn bright, but Ori keeps his eyes on the stars. He imagines dragons, and warriors battling them. For some reason, he pictures Fíli's face, the way Fíli would laugh if asked to slay a legendary monster. He would, Ori knows, but he might fall to flames or claws, so Ori is glad the trees are here to keep them safe. 

“Ori,” Bilbo says, when the joint is long gone and it's just them and their private thoughts. “Are you ever afraid of Fíli?” 

“Yes,” Ori answers, because it's true. “He's like Thorin. There's all this anger in him, even if he hides it. He's always been so much more angry than Kíli. People always liked Kíli more, when they were children.” He closes his eyes to the stars, than opens them again when the wind rocks the hammock back and forth. 

He had a storybook when he was small, about a boy going to the North Wind for help. The illustrations had painted the North Wind as a polar bear, standing on his back legs like a man, wrapped in a blue fur coat. It had fascinated Ori, and even now, he sees the way bears feature so prominently in his own work. He's always been captivated by things that live only in the mind, easily absorbed in stories about mermaids and ghosts and kelpies and will-o'-the-wisps. 

He thinks maybe if he'd had different parents, he wouldn't have needed those stories so much. 

“When I was eight, Liam and Patrick robbed Dori, and beat him. Patrick overdosed the next day, died. Liam disappeared. My mum, she was...you know.” Because everyone knows. “She left. Took all her money and left. I woke up, and I was alone. I was alone for two days, before Fíli came and found me. Everyone else had forgotten me, you see. Dori was in hospital, Nori was still in prison.”

The wind rocks the hammock, and Ori thinks of the North Wind puffing out his cheeks and blowing. 

“Fíli didn't.” He turns to look at Bilbo and finds Bilbo looking at him. “Fíli's always been my favourite, because even when he's afraid, or angry, or hurt, he always remembers other people. He's like Thorin. He does what's right, even when it's not what he wants.” There's a wrinkle between Bilbo's eyes as he watches Ori, like he's understanding what Ori means now. “I told him to leave me be, and even though he loves me, even though it hurt him and made him angry, he did as I asked.”

“Then why are you afraid of him?” Bilbo asks. 

“The same reason you're afraid of Thorin,” Ori replies. “Their love is like fire. Sometimes it's so much, it feels like it will burn you. Other times, it burns other people, and even when they deserve it, even when you want them dead, it can be frightening to see how far they'll go for you.” 

“Did he hurt Liam for his father...” Bilbo bites his lip, like he thinks he shouldn't ask Ori the next question. “Or for you?” 

Ori closes his eyes and turns his head back to the sky. Slowly, he raises up his right arm, so Bilbo can see, and rolls back the over-long sleeve of his shirt. He wears long sleeves, if he can, usually. Keeps all the things that can hurt him safely hidden away. 

But now he shows Bilbo, and hears the little exhale of shock. 

They're very small, round and white with age. Some have faded into nothing, it's been so long. Some have not. 

“Fíli loves me.” The stars pulse, a gentle in-and-out like they're breathing with Ori. He thinks of the stars as the stories paint them, great bears and heroes and dancing sisters. “Once, when we were in school, some other boys, they took my things. Pushed me around a bit.” In truth, they'd scared him more than anything, but that hadn't mattered. “Fíli found them. He nearly got expelled for what he did, but no one ever touched me again. He made his point. That I was with the union. That I was with him, and anyone who hurt me would regret it.” 

He finally lets himself think about tonight, when he'd seen Liam, sitting in the open garage. He hadn't even recognized him for a moment, until he saw the little tattoo on the inside of his arm as he turned. _Gloria_ , it read in swirling script. “Ori,” Liam had said, starting towards him. “Look at you.” 

Liam had sounded afraid, if anything, afraid and sad and old, but the hatred that burns Ori up at the very thought of Liam is stronger than any pity.

So when Fíli lunged forward and grabbed Liam by the front of his shirt, slamming him bodily across the workbench, Ori had not stopped him. He had even let Fíli punch him twice before Ori's brain caught up with the moment. Ori had clutched at Fíli's shoulders, pulling on him, pleading, _ordering_ him to stop. Just stop. 

Fíli had stopped. 

He had stopped and stood still in Ori's arms, Ori pressed up against his back, shaking and afraid and unsure. A very young part of him wanted to hurt Liam, now that he was big enough to do it, to fight back. 

A very old part of him looked at his father sprawled across the table, sitting up on an elbow to cough up blood from his bruising nose, and had known there was no point. It wouldn't make him feel better. It wouldn't make him feel anything. 

When Thorin and the others had arrived, Ori had slipped away, out here, under the stars. In the hammock where last he laid with Fíli.

“Fíli's always been so angry,” Ori says. “But I am too, in my own way, so we work. We understand. I know what everyone says about us, about the union. About Fíli, Kíli, Gimli, and me. We were the closest in age, you know, and we just...it's not always easy, being who we are. But together, we work. This whole family works.” 

Bilbo sighs, or maybe he yawns. Then he says, “After my father married my mother, things were always strained between his family and ours. And my mother's family never understood her choice either. So, you see, after they died, it was just me. On my own. Until Frodo.” He shakes his head, the movement brushing his hair across Ori's arm. “And I'm not enough, I know.”

“Thorin loves you,” Ori says. “And you could be a part of our family. Could be with us. We like Frodo.” 

Bilbo smiles. “He likes you. He loves all the stories you tell him. Yesterday after supper, he told me all about The Pansy King.” Ori smiles back at him, remembering how easy it had been with Frodo, when the little boy seems so intimidated by Fíli, Kíli and Gimli. Frodo had taken to Ori like a duck to water though, and it's nice, to be the interesting one for once. 

He'd had Frodo in his lap when Fíli came in the room, his hands in his pockets as he watched the pair of them. Frodo had been listening to Ori with complete focus, as Ori told him stories about the Faerie Queen and how easily jealous she could be, how kind and how cruel in turns. Ori told him the story of Tam Lin, as Fíli sat down beside them, wrapping an arm around Ori's shoulders. 

Ori had settled his head into the crook of Fíli's neck, Frodo half-asleep against his chest while Ori spoke of love and a woman who would test her mettle against the Faerie Queen herself for that love. And she'd won, Ori made sure to let him know. She won her lord from the Lady, and kept him all their days, for he loved her just as much in return. 

“I just don't know if this is what's right for Frodo,” Bilbo says, and there's worry and unease etched into every line of his face. “Especially after tonight. After I saw them all like that. After I saw Liam.” 

“It's a funny thing,” Ori replies. “In stories, the hero never needs to prove themselves. They just _are_. The world revolves around them, and they're always just and true, and they always win the day.” Like King Arthur and his knights, a dream of great men chosen by destiny to save the lands. A king sleeping until it was time for him to rise and take up arms again against the things that lived in shadows. “But that's not true, in real life. People aren't great, not really. But most of them are trying to be good, and take care of their own. The union is like that, I think.”

“Like what?” 

King Arthur and his knights, brave and true and never faltering. “Thorin loves you. He wants to try. I think that's as good as you ever get, really.” 

“I don't know that I'm well-suited for Thorin's kind of love,” Bilbo confesses. “The way he makes me feel frightens me. I worry I'll bring Frodo into something too deep, too dangerous, just for my own wants and needs. I can't do this alone anymore, I _can't_. I'll go mad, I will. I'm so tired, and I know Frodo sees it, and he deserves a proper family, but I'm the only one I can trust in our family...and...I don't know what to do. I don't know what's right anymore.” 

Ori wishes he had more weed, or maybe a little beer or rum. Something to keep his world soft and simple and without Liam. Liam breathes fire over Ori's heart, and he wants to cry from the pain he's kept so dulled. He wishes Liam dead, and thinks himself awful for it, but he wants it all the same. Liam is nothing but a broken addict now, deep in debt to Dáin, and worse, the Gallaghers. He cannot hurt Ori. 

And yet Ori hurts. 

“I never know what's right,” he says to Bilbo, a confession of his own. “Fíli always thought I was his, and the truth is, I always was. But I know that's wrong. It's too much. But it's what I want, so I don't think it's wrong. I need him, like I need Kíli and Gimli, and Fíli needs me. I don't care if it's wrong, how we all are, how we need each other, not when I know it's what makes me whole and happy. And I know the union does bad things sometimes, I know Nori does things for Thorin that are wrong, but I still see Thorin as my King Arthur, the one who made my mother and Liam _go away_ , forever. And Nori is my Gaheris, he is Thorin's left hand, the one he can't openly acknowledge, the one who keeps us safe from the monsters we cannot see.”

It's rambling, a distant part of his mind knows. Madness, brought on by too much weed and stress. 

However, Bilbo still asks, “And Fíli?” 

“My Gawain,” Ori answers far too easily. 

“So if Thorin is Arthur, does that make me Guinevere?” Bilbo asks, laughing. “And I suppose I'll have a torrid affair with Dwalin before running away with him?”

“That's not always how it goes, in the stories. Some say Lancelot was only her friend, someone she trusted and loved like a brother. I like those ones better.” Ori can't stand the ones that paint Guinevere as unfaithful for having love outside of Arthur. Not all love is physical, he thinks. Not all love is lust. He thinks Guinevere's love was like how he himself loves Kíli. Close, yes, but not like his love for Fíli. “You're whoever you want to be, Bilbo. This isn't a story. You don't have to play a role you don't like.” 

Again, they fall quiet.

And again, Ori thinks of Liam, and his childhood, his fears, and the one bright spot in his frightened life. The person who found him, when no one else knew to look, who took his hand and led him home, to a safe place. A place where Dís cried over every bruise and scrape she found on his skin and told him how sorry she was. A place where Fíli lent him his own toothbrush and pyjamas.

A place where Thorin came through the door, and knelt in front of Ori, and promised him that Liam and Gloria would not ever come back, would not ever hurt him again. Thorin, his childhood hero, the one who gave him to Dori, and later Nori as well. The one who made him the first promise anyone ever kept. 

Until now, when Liam stands in the garage, if not hale, than alive. 

It's more than he deserves. 

But it won't be Ori who wastes the time on him. 

“I think you're the only one who can make that decision right now,” Ori says. “But if it helps, I think you have good intentions, and that's a lot, with children. Love, and them knowing you just want to take care of them.” It had been enough to bridge the gaps between him and Dori, Ori knowing that his brother loved him, and wanted to protect him. “Having a lot of people trying to take care of you is nice too though. For both of you.” 

He remembers how tired Dori had been, when he was a child. Ori thinks that if the union, if the Durins, hadn't come in and helped, Dori might not have managed until Nori finally came home for good. He thinks if he himself hadn't had Fíli, and Kíli and Gimli, he might have broken apart into a thousand pieces every time some other kid in the village thought it was funny to call Gloria a whore, or Liam a terrorist. There had always been someone at his back though. 

“I think Frodo has a hard road in front of him, no matter what you do to help.” Above them, the trees sway with the wind, and Ori pictures panes of glass sliding about in their frames, allowing in slivers of open sky, places where the dragons could slither through. “Hard roads are easier to walk when you've got company.” 

Bilbo laughs, up into the air like sharp, stiletto knives, and Ori sees them stabbing the small dragons that sneak into their realm, the ones that would tear them apart and destroy them all. “I suppose you know best of all, don't you?”

“I do,” Ori answers honestly. “Even when Fíli is being awful, and I can't stand him, because really Bilbo, I love him, but sometimes I want to throttle him, even then...even then...” 

Ori remembers that summer, tucked up against Fíli, the way his heart had sometimes ached in his chest because he loved Fíli that much, and how blue the sky had been and how bright the sun had shone on them. He had gotten sunburned on his arms, when Fíli had pushed Ori's sleeves back and kissed every scar in the crook of his elbow, until Ori had cried.

Fíli had kissed his cheeks too, where they were wet, before finally kissing his mouth. 

Ori doesn't know how he could ever love anyone but Fíli. 

“Even then, I love him,” he finishes. “Because he's Fíli, and I'll follow him anywhere.” 

Bilbo smiles weakly, but just when Ori thinks he's going to say something else, Bilbo turns his face up to the stars. Ori follows suit, and says, “There are dragons, up there.” 

“What was in that joint, then?” Bilbo incredulously asks. 

“Just because you can't see something doesn't mean it's not there,” Ori says. “I haven't seen Liam since I was eight. But he's been out there. Waiting for a crack in the glass he can slip through. He wants back in the union. He wants protection from Dáin. From his problems.” Ori sighs, wishes he could blow another smoke ring. He loves the way they look against the sky, the grey illuminated against the dark, dark blue. “Fíli was just trying to slay my dragon for me, really.”

“And you would bestow your favour upon that knight?” Bilbo asks playfully, and Ori laughs. 

“Yes,” he answers, completely honest. 

The first time he and Fíli had sex, neither was a virgin, and perhaps it was better for that. They were seventeen, and it was summer and hot and the sheets had stuck to Ori's skin. He had buried his hands in Fíli's hair and pulled him in for kiss after kiss, until he'd thrown his head back on the pillow and gasped his way through his orgasm.

Before anything though, before Fíli had pushed his hand up Ori's shirt, he'd looked down at him and said, “If you don't like it, we'll stop, alright? So tell me now, do you want me?”

And Ori had said “Yes,” and pulled Fíli down for a kiss and Fíli had not hesitated again. 

Because he'd wanted Fíli for as long as he could remember, even when his feelings towards Fíli had confused him. “I gave my heart away when I was eight,” Ori says. “I know how we look, from the outside. I do. But anything Fíli has of mine, I gave him freely. And I might be quieter, and I might be less impressive, but I know my own mind. I know my own heart. I'm not weak, and he's not controlling me or hurting me.” 

“I never said -”

“That's what everyone thinks. And you should get used to it, because people are going to think the same thing about you and Thorin. They already do. You work in the Dragon, you know it.” Ori sits up, and the hammock is off-balance. “So make your choice now. Either you love Thorin enough to not give a fuck what everyone else thinks, or you don't. Either you love him enough to handle the union, or you don't. But don't make him think you'll stay when you won't. It's cruel.” 

Bilbo is still lying down, and against the red cloth, his hair is very light. Not as light as Fíli's, of course. “Even in school,” Bilbo says. “Even when I thought he was the most arrogant prat that had ever walked the earth, I was always looking at him.” 

“I know the feeling,” Ori replies, and they both laugh. 

“Were you happy, growing up like this? With them?” 

Ori nods. “They're always there, when you need them. Every art show I got in, every concert I played in, there was someone. I preferred it to _not_ be Nori and Dwalin, of course...” Bilbo laughs again, much louder than before. 

“I just want to make sure he's got people to take care of him,” Bilbo says. “When he's angry with me, or when he wants to talk about things I can't understand...I want to know that there's someone I trust, that he trusts, that he can go to. I want him to have places he can hide. I want him to have a _family_.” 

“Well,” Ori sighs, and leans over his knees, swaying the hammock all the more. “We're pretty good at it. And even the bad parts, parts like this, it's never not worth it. In my experience, that is.” 

Bilbo smiles up at him, a bit sadly, but not pityingly. “I thought you might be the best person to ask, actually.” 

“For Frodo? You're right, I think.” Ori looks out at the garage, the windows lit in the darkness. Things seem quieter, the storm subsiding at last to leave them in calm waters. “I'll talk to him, if you like. Whenever he needs.” 

“I have him seeing the doctor in the town, you know, but...” 

“It's hard to talk at that age, especially to a stranger,” Ori explains, and when the wind blows gently over them, he imagines the North Wind sighing. “When you don't understand just what death means, what 'gone' really means. But the doctor helps. And so does having a friend.” 

Bilbo nods. “Thank you, Ori.” 

The door to the garage opens, and more light spills out across the grass. It's blocked by the silhouette of someone, just a black shadow until they walk out into the yard, and he sees the light highlighting their blond hair. 

“Fíli,” Ori says, and tilts his head back to meet Fíli's kiss. 

“Hello, sweetheart,” he replies, and Ori sighs over the bruise forming on Fíli's cheek. “Dwalin took Liam with him. For safekeeping, until we talk to Dáin and the Gallaghers.” 

Ori smiles, as much as he can right now, then holds out his hands for Fíli to take. Fíli does so, helping him off the hammock, and if he uses the opportunity to pull Ori up against him, well, Ori goes without resistance. He balances himself, palms on Fíli's chest, before sliding his hands up to cup Fíli's face and pull him down. Ori kisses him first on the cheek, gentle on the bruise, then on the mouth. 

“You're a very good knight,” Ori tells him running his thumb over the reddened area.

Fíli raises his eyebrows. “Am I?” He ducks down, and presses their temples together. 

Ori nods. “There are dragons, in the sky. They're always looking for a way in. But they won't. The trees are protecting us.” 

“Oh?” Fíli smiles, and the hands on Ori's waist are strong. “That's good of them.”

“Some might slip through the cracks,” Ori says. “They're clever creatures, you know.” 

“Yeah, well,” Fíli shrugs. “No worries. I'll slay any dragon that slips through the cracks.” He's very serious, despite their game. Fíli knows Ori like no one else does. 

Fíli has very dark eyes, unlike Thorin and Dís. Ori likes them better, likes how warm Fíli's seem by comparison. He likes best how they go with Fíli's hair. “You're my knight,” he says again. “With a lion's heart.”

Behind him, Bilbo laughs, and says, “Sorry, I think that one might have been laced with something a little stronger, and he had more than me.” 

Ori frowns, even as Fíli smiles and shakes his head. His eyes are still on Ori. “No, this is just how he is when he stops caring about what he says to people. He's a little brilliant, you know.” Ori smiles approvingly up at him, and reaches back, pulling the elastic out of Fíli's hair and combing his fingers through until it hangs loose around his face. “Making me your lionheart, love?” 

“You're always my lionheart,” Ori replies, and moves to stand beside Fíli so that he might look at Bilbo. 

Bilbo smiles at Ori from the hammock, and says, “I never thought what everyone else does, Ori. You're not the kind who would let that happen.” 

“No.” Ori shakes his head. “I'm not.”

“Right, and we've moved on to mysterious conversations even I don't understand.” Fíli secures an arm around Ori, like he thinks Ori will disappear from his side. Such a silly thought, Ori thinks. Why would he go anywhere Fíli wasn't? “You ready to go home?” 

Ori nods, and Fíli says good-bye to Bilbo.

“I'll see you later,” Ori says, and Bilbo nods. 

“Soon.” He stays in the hammock, as they walk away. Watching the dragons swoop overhead or perhaps listening to the stars and their ancient stories. Maybe he sees something Ori can't, another story playing out before him in the night sky. 

They're halfway home, fingers intertwined, when Ori says, “I don't want you to slay this dragon, Fíli.” 

Fíli squeezes his hand. “I would, you know. I really would. Not for Patrick. For you though, I would.” 

“I know,” Ori replies, and squeezes back. “You're going to slay monsters for us, one day. I understand that. I understand that the things the union has to do aren't always nice, or noble.” 

Because the union is not the round table, and they are not kings or princes or knights. They are not stories, written by people needing an ideal to live up to, needing heroes to believe in when the darkness was too much. They are people, and sometimes things must be done that are not kind, and it might hurt, but it's true and Ori is not in the habit of lying to himself.

“But I'd rather not have the first be for me,” Ori says, and Fíli stops them in the middle of the pavement, turns Ori so Fíli can press their temples together, stroke Ori's cheek with his free hand. He exhales, and opens his eyes, so he and Ori are looking right at one another.

“No dragons will touch us,” he promises. “Not as long as I'm beside you.”

“I know.” 

Ori truly does, in every beat of his heart and breath he breathes. 

“Let's go home.”


	11. Ain't What You Want

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone is leaving him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kíli being a mess because I'm a mess.

Ori mostly sort-of lives by himself. Technically. It's a very technical line that keeps Dori and Dís satisfied, even if Kíli doesn't quite understand how that works. Either way, Ori _technically_ lives on his own, which means he eats like he technically lives alone. 

Which means leftover Indian food for Kíli. Or Thai, he thinks, when he spots another carry-out box with a familiar logo. Dís never lets them have Thai, on account of she's allergic to coconut. He's not quite sure why he and Fíli get punished for that. The box yields something that looks like a combination of beef, peppers and rice, and smells good enough. 

He's just opening a beer when Ori finally says from the bed, “I swear to whatever god cares about you, Kíli, if you keep breaking in to nick my food, I'm going to stab you with a pencil.” 

“I didn't break in, I used Fíli's key.” He'd nicked that too, his brother still peacefully snoring on the sofa. Also, he'd swiped a few cigarettes, but Fíli had a job and money, and Kíli didn't. He needed to share. “And besides, it's not like you can eat all of this. You never eat anything.” 

“Compared to you, no one eats anything, you bottomless pit,” Ori replies grouchily, sitting up. He looks a mess, his hair all sticking up and half his face blotchy from being pressed into the pillow. “It's nine in the morning, what are you doing here?” 

“Oh, that, yeah. No one thinks you should be alone just now.” When Ori continues to stare blankly at him, Kíli adds, “I think someone messaged you about it.” 

Now Ori checks his phone, and sighs. “Of course,” he says to his knees and not Kíli. “Why didn't Fíli come?” 

“What's wrong with me?” Kíli's a bit insulted. Just a bit. Maybe a lot. 'Cause they're friends. “I'm just as good company. Just because I don't want to shag you doesn't mean I'm not.” It doesn't seem to make much of an impact, likely because Ori isn't all that impressed by Kíli's sulking any more. He'll give in if Kíli makes a fuss though. He wants to make a fuss. Instead, he explains, “Fíli was up all night with Thorin and Dáin. He was still sleeping when I left, and he needs to keep sleeping or he's not going to be of much use. Unless you want a pillow.” A thought occurs to Kíli. “Ugh, you two sleep all cuddled up, don't you? The pair of you make me sick.” 

They did that the last time they all watched a film together, Ori resting on Fíli's chest. Kíli hadn't liked it, but he thinks he should be used to it. 

“Why you?” Ori groans, falling back into the bed and all but disappearing beneath the covers. “You're such an idiot.” 

“That's not nice,” Kíli chides playfully, crawling in on top of him, the blankets safely between them. Fíli can be such an arse over Ori, but more importantly, Ori doesn't like it when Kíli's too friendly with him. Probably because of what happened when he was a kid, but whenever Kíli tries to bring that up, Fíli threatens to punch him in the mouth and Ori goes quiet. “Hey, wake up. Or at least tell me the password on your laptop. I'll keep myself occupied.” 

“You're not looking at porn on my computer,” Ori mumbles, hiding his face from Kíli. “Play on your mobile or something.”

“No, I want to watch _Top Gear_ ,” Kíli whines, settling on top of him. Ori is a lot softer when he's all wrapped up like this, and he's warm. “Let me, or I won't let you sleep. And I'll drink all your beer,” he threatens, dropping all his weight on Ori's skinny frame. He's always been titchy, and it's always been easy to pin him down, keep him in place. Ori never seems to mind, and Kíli likes being close to him.

“Should you be drinking if you're supposed to be 'guarding' me?” The quotation marks around the word are audible, so Kíli breathes in his ear, earning a muttered swear.

“It's a beer, it won't hurt,” Kíli replies, squeezing Ori tighter. “Come on, let me use it.” He pinches Ori's ear, unthinking, and almost gets smacked in the face for it. “Oi!” He scrabbles off of Ori, scowling. That's not usually one of Ori's no-spots. Ori's arms, and the back of his neck, Kíli's not allowed to touch there, but his ear is usually all right. “I was only teasing!” He didn't deserve a smack. Not for teasing. 

“Don't,” Ori demands, and there's a tremor in his voice that's not usually there, not any more. Not for years, and it stills Kíli. He doesn't like being the one who puts that sound in Ori's voice. Not at all. Ori shouldn't be angry at Kíli, not ever. “Don't, just _don't_.” 

He's the only one who still babies Kíli, when he wants it. Maybe that's what he's wanting right now, to be held like Ori used to do for him. But Liam is here now.

Maybe Ori wants to talk now, when Fíli isn't here to build walls around him and act like everyone is out to hurt him. 

Kíli sits up, crossing his legs under him, and asks something he's never asked before: “That something your old man used to do to you?” 

He thinks Ori won't answer. He'll probably call Fíli and Fíli will come over, tired and upset, and thrash Kíli, which hey, he might deserve, because really, they don't -

“No,” Ori says into his pillow. “My mother used to twist my ear. She'd do it 'til I cried.”

He thinks about Patrick, even though he can usually avoid it. Patrick died when he was just a kid, and he hardly remembers him. Hardly. “Why'd she do it?” 

Ori shrugs beneath the covers. “Don't know. Guess I was bothering her. She didn't need much of a reason, really. Liam ignored me, really. He slept a lot, but I guess that's because he was just high. He only got mean sometimes.” Ori sighs, and he still doesn't look at Kíli. “Long as I stayed out of the way, and kept quiet, they left me alone.” 

That sounds familiar. Too familiar. His mum, helping to run the garage and trying to be home, but always tired. Patrick. Fucking Patrick, home. Kíli had known how to walk quietly since before he can remember, because Patrick didn't like noise. “That's what Patrick was like. Long as we stayed out of his way, he didn't mind us. And Mum, she would have skinned him if she thought he was hurting us. But he wasn't nice, most of the time. Grabbed me by my hair once and threatened to throw me down the stairs.” Kíli had been seven. It's his last memory of his father. He'd been kicking a football in the hall, and he doesn't remember how the events progressed, only that one minute the football went under the table at the end of the hall, and the next, Patrick had him by the hair, shouting at him, threatening him. He'd been scared. He'd been terrified. He'd wanted his mum, wanted Thorin. 

And then Patrick had stilled, and gone quiet, and let him go. Slammed the door of the bedroom behind him. Kíli remembers picking at the grooves in the hardwood with his nails, too scared to move.“I've never even told Fíli that. He doesn't want to hear it.” Fíli hates Patrick so much, deep down in his blood and bones. He doesn't want Kíli to talk about him because he wants to pretend Patrick never existed. Wants to pretend Liam never existed.

Only Liam exists again now, and so does Patrick. 

“He doesn't like to talk about it either,” Ori quietly says, finally turning over. His face is still blotchy, and now Kíli sees how red-rimmed his eyes are. He'd been drinking the night before. That's not like him. “You know...you _know_ Patrick didn't like Fíli, right?” 

“Yeah, well, Fíli wasn't very good at the whole 'staying out of the way and being quiet' thing. He's still not, if you haven't noticed.” Ori is rubbing at his arm now, a reflex that makes Kíli uncomfortable, so he looks up at the ceiling instead. He knows what's there, where Liam left his mark on Ori. “He's all right, isn't he?” Something in him hates this change in their group, that now Fíli is closer to Ori, that now Ori knows things Kíli might not. That Fíli knows things Kíli doesn't. 

He hates being left out, really.

“Fíli?” Ori asks, and sighs through his nose. “As well as he can be, right now. You know he doesn't like thinking about Patrick, or Liam, or -”

“Those burns on your arm?” Kíli supposes he deserves the glare he gets, but it's a fair point, so he's not taking it back. “Your brothers don't look like they're in great shape either, if it makes you feel better. Dáin keeps asking how Dori is, when Dori is coming 'round. It's not good. Dori needs to see him, or he's going to get his feelings hurt, and we need Dáin's help right now.” Kíli doesn't blame Dáin, but he doesn't say that out loud, because he knows Ori does. Nori and Ori have always been selfish when it comes to Dori. He raised them both, taking Nori out from under Liam and Gloria after something really bad had happened. None of them know what. But Dori had taken Nori when Nori was thirteen, then Ori after Gloria and Liam buggered off. 

Dáin is Dori's brother too though. Kíli can't help but he thinks he deserves a little acknowledgement, even if Nori and Ori don't like it. No one seems to be asking Dori, for that matter. 

“I can't make Dori do anything,” Ori says, shaking his head as much as he can when he's still against the pillow. “And if I ask, he'll want something in return, and you know what it'll be.” He raises his eyebrows. “I _can't_ , Kíli. I can't. It hurt bad enough the first time, and I was actually really angry with Fíli then.” He has a point. It is what Dori would ask, and Fíli would go ballistic if Ori split up with him again right now, with all this going on. Kíli doesn't want to deal with that drama again. It had been bad enough before they were dating, and worse during the actual break. A real break-up? Fíli might burn down a building, one with Dori in it. “You know how he is.” Understatement of the century.

“I know how he is about you.” It shouldn't sound resentful. It really isn't. Kíli's never liked boys, not how Fíli does, and even if he did, he's pretty sure he wouldn't like _Ori_. So he doesn't understand why he's so gleeful about being ordered to come over, getting to spend time with Ori on his own, without Fíli boxing him in, keeping Ori all to himself with no room for Kíli. “Why do you fancy him, anyway?” He's _Fíli_ , after all, the stupid prat. 

“Because I do,” Ori replies, so simply and so very much himself. Kíli's always liked that about Ori, how simple he is, how sure. He always tells Kíli exactly what he's thinking, how things are and what everyone else is thinking too. “I wish I didn't, sometimes, but it is how it is.” He's always been Ori, glued to Fíli's side, unless Kíli used a crowbar.

“But he's Fíli.” Fíli, with his bad temper and his moods and his angst. 

“He never thrashed me like he does you,” Ori reminds him dryly. “I don't know what anyone sees in Dori and Nori either, if that helps.” Like it's a joke. Like Kíli has ever cared about Dori and Nori.

Kíli considers the next question before he asks, wondering if Ori's likely to tell on him. Knowing Ori, probably not, because they're mates, they always have been. Enough of a good chance for Kíli to hazard, “Did you ever fancy me?”

He doesn't like boys. He just wants to know if he was ever in the running. 

Beside him, Ori turns red at the same time he frowns, clearly trying to suss out Kíli's intentions. He must not find anything too bad, because he answers. If he was really upset, he wouldn't. “Yes, I did.” It satisfies Kíli, oddly enough, to hear that. “Sort of. Not the same way I cared about Fíli, but I did fancy you a little too. I'd be more surprised if I hadn't thought about it at least once. Do you even like boys though?” 

“No,” Kíli admits, shrugging. “Why'd you pick Fíli though?” Why wasn't Kíli good enough to stay stuck on? He and Fíli are about the same on looks, but personality-wise, Kíli knows he wins. 

“Because I'm in love with Fíli,” Ori says, sitting up on his elbow, frowning. “Are you jealous?” 

He thinks about that for a good long minute, then moves forward the little bit of space between them and kisses Ori. Ori's so shocked he doesn't move an inch, not that Kíli blames him. He hadn't really given much warning. It only lasts a second before Kíli leans back, considering it. 

It hadn't done anything for him. He hadn't minded kissing Ori. It was only Ori. But he hadn't felt anything like what he felt when he kissed a girl he fancied. 

Ori stares at him for a long minute, then hisses, “You don't get to just _kiss_ me, you prat, and if Fíli ever finds out, he's going to kill you, especially if he knows we were in my bed!” 

That's a fair point. Fíli will get all upset and he'll shout at Kíli and he'll do that thing he does where he holds Ori close and acts like no one else has a claim on him. That no one else defended him growing up. That no one else had been his friend for all their lives. “Then don't tell him.” 

He thinks it should have felt like something. Why else does he feel like this when he thinks about Fíli and Ori together? He doesn't even mind Fíli's attention being off him, because it means less insults and punching, but there's still this angry twist in his chest when he thinks about them together like they are. 

Meanwhile, Ori is shaking his head, raking his hand through his hair. “Kíli, you can't ask me to keep secrets like that, it's not right -”

“Can I kiss you again?” Maybe it wasn't long enough. Maybe it has to be a proper kiss. Then he might understand, might feel something.

Ori shakes his head slowly, and climbs out of the bed. He has one of Fíli's dark blue garage tee shirts on and his pants, black boxers, but whereas Fíli always stares at Ori like his brain has dribbled out his ears when he's this undressed, Kíli doesn't feel a thing. It's just Ori, kind of pale and titchy and nervous. A bit frightened right now, but that's probably Kíli's fault. 

“This isn't right, Kíli. Fíli wouldn't like it. _I_ don't like it. I don't know what you're doing, or why, but you either need to stop it, or leave. I don't care what you were told to do.” He really looks uncomfortable, and it makes Kíli feel bad. He shouldn't have done that, or asked. 

“I don't fancy you,” Kíli says, confused. There's nothing inside, nothing stirring at the thought of Ori naked underneath him, kissing Ori. If anything, it's weird. But he's still upset. “So what's my problem?”

There's a really long minute where Ori just stands there and looks at him, sort of small in Fíli's shirt. Always sort of small. He carefully sits back down on the bed, reaching out to touch Kíli's hand. Their fingers intertwine, but it doesn't make Kíli's heart race. It's just nice to touch Ori, because Ori is his mate and he loves him in his own way. 

“I always wondered what was so wrong with me that Liam didn't love me,” Ori says, not looking at Kíli, but then, that's his nature. “I thought it must be my fault, for a long time. But you see, they treated Nori the same way. You know Liam broke Nori's arm once, because Nori talked back to him? Nori says that Dori was ready to kill him.” He shrugs. “Dáin offered, you know. He offered to kill Liam for it. And when what happened, happened, he offered again. He meant it. Sometimes, I wish Dori had said yes. Like now.” 

Because of course Ori sees right through what's going on in Kíli's head, finds the problem without trying. 

“I'm never sure if I'm supposed to miss my dad or not.” Kíli does, he guesses. Patrick had been good sometimes. Not often, but sometimes. “I guess I don't. But it still hurts. Everyone always talks about what a bad kid I was, and I keep thinking maybe if I was a better one, he'd of liked me and Fíli more.” 

“He helped make you,” Ori says, touching their temples together. “He can't have been all bad.” 

Kíli smirks, and closes his eyes against the touch. He doesn't want to kiss Ori, but he does want this, this easy closeness between them that's been hard to get since Fíli stole him. Ori has always been Kíli's source of comfort, the friend who'll tell him he's special and wonderful and worthwhile. Kíli doesn't like admitting how much he needs that, or how angry he's been over Ori ditching him to go be an adult with Fíli. 

“Liam is really twitchy,” Kíli confides, though he was under strict instruction to not say a word. “He says he's clean, and I guess he is, but he's hurting for it now.” He doesn't think he should say what he says next, but it might be good for Ori. “He's always scribbling on stuff. Drawing, like you do. He's pretty good. Not as good as you. But I guess you get it from him.” 

Maybe he's made a mistake, he thinks, when Ori gets all tense and swallows. But then he smiles, and Kíli knows he's done right.

“All right, we can watch _Top Gear_ now.” 

He lets Kíli put his head in Ori's lap while they watch, running his fingers through Kíli's hair because Kíli likes it. Eventually, while another episode is loading, he says, “I'm always going to be your friend, Kíli. And I always love you, even though I don't fancy you. And you love me, even though you don't fancy me.” 

“You could kiss me again, just to be sure,” Kíli offers, and Ori laughs.

It's like before. It's nice and comfortable, Ori taking care of him like he always has, his hand in Kíli's hair and a show on in the background while Kíli daydreams. He thinks about the before, before Fíli's birthday, when he and Ori settled together as more than friends. Before Fíli and Ori fought so much Kíli worried over choosing sides. Before Ori told Fíli whatever he had said about a break, and Fíli had come home with his eyes red-rimmed, smelling like drink.

It's nice.

They've watched three episodes by the time Fíli shows up, taking his key back with a scowl, and looking very much like he wants to punch Kíli in the head. Kíli supposes that seeing him with his head in Ori's lap on the bed hadn't helped. Fíli can be such a divvy. 

Once Kíli is up and off the bed, Fíli takes his place, glaring at Kíli with a _get gone_ glare, like he has the right to order Kíli away from Ori. Like Ori is just his.

Kíli steals another beer and shows himself out, but he doesn't altogether leave. 

Instead, he sits on the steps with his beer, the cold that funny kind that won't melt snow but doesn't feel too bad. He's sat on these steps so many times. Bloody hell, he helped build these steps, isn't that a thought?

He's not in love with Ori. He had hoped maybe that was the problem, that he was just jealous that Fíli got there first. But that's not it. He loves Ori, because he's known Ori his whole life, but he's not in love with Ori. He is jealous though. But of what?

What's wrong with him? Why does he feel like this? 

Left out. Dejected. 

Alone.

Fíli and Ori are a pair, and Gimli found Legolas. What's left for Kíli? All his friends have left him behind. 

His own dad didn't even want him. 

He finishes the beer and wishes a beer was enough to make him drunk, but it's not. Unfortunately, he has to face this shit sober, but he doesn't want to. He wants things to be like they were, before Fíli got his shit together and told Ori how it was, before Legolas' mum died and he and Gimli finally worked themselves out. He wants it to be the four of them again, the best of mates, as close as brothers. 

He misses it. 

He doesn't want Ori like Fíli does, he just wants Ori to think he's as important as Fíli. He wants Gimli to be his best friend again, wants Ori to baby him again. Kíli had liked that way of things. 

He'd liked pretending Patrick never existed too. Liam as well. He had been fatherless, and Ori had been fatherless, and it had been easy. It had been so _easy_. Why should he love Patrick, when Patrick had never seemed to love him? What sort of father threatens to throw his kid down the stairs? Not a very good one.

He should be dead. It's the least he deserves.

Patrick taught Kíli how to tie his laces.

Thorin had loved him. Thorin had been his father, as much as he could. He'd loved Kíli, brought him up like a dad should. 

Even Thorin's found someone new to take care of though. 

It's cold.

Kíli lights a cigarette, and waits. Eventually, they'll be done fucking or shouting, or whatever they're doing, and Ori will peek out, invite him back in.


	12. Same Trailer, Different Park

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kíli meets Tauriel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I promised Bagginshield, but this was done first. Next one, I promise.

It's cold out, but Kíli's enough of a smoker to endure it, as long as he switches hands regularly in his pockets. Walking quickly helps, gets his heart going and the blood pumping. He's not so much of a smoker his lungs are killing him either, but his mum and uncle have both been after him to quit. Thorin's not enough of a hypocrite to outright order it, at least.

If it were any other day, he'd be headed to the jeweller's, to Dori, but the shop is closed. Dori had told him to take the week, what with Dáin here and after every spare minute Dori isn't spending babying Nori and Ori. Nori seems to need it more than Ori, but Kíli thinks that's because Nori remembers more than Ori, and Nori's temper is a lot nastier. 

Kíli wants to kick something.

It had been easy to think things would settle down, and maybe they would have. They would have kept up their easy existence, and eventually all gotten on as best they could. But now they're all clinging to one another, and Kíli's walking down the pavement alone, unsure of just what he's supposed to be doing. Even Bilbo seems to have more of a place in what's going on at the garage than Kíli. He'd fronted the money they needed to pay off the Gallaghers and save Liam's head, Dáin brokering the deal. Fíli is sitting beside Thorin, most of the time.

And here's poor little Kíli, off by his lonesome. Useless and stupid. 

He climbs the steps beside the bakery and lingers in front of the doors, wondering what to do. Gimli's not in. Thorin had sent him down to see Thranduil with Bofur, figuring between the pair of them they could explain what was happening with little fuss. Legolas is usually there, sleeping in Gimli's bed or cooking breakfast in Gimli's little kitchen. Kíli's still not sure Legolas has forgiven him for what happened awhile back, and he doesn't know what Gimli's told him about everything. It's cold though, so he knocks. 

Nothing. Legolas is either sleeping or not there.

Pre-emptively wincing, he listens at Ori's door, praying he's not going to once again hear more than he should. He knows Fíli isn't at the garage yet, so he might be here, and Kíli had shared a wall with Fíli long enough. All he works out is murmuring, but that could just mean quiet sex, since he doesn't hear anything else. If they are having sex, it wouldn't be a big thing for Kíli to walk in. 

If they're talking though, about Liam and Patrick and everything, Kíli interrupting might do more harm than good. Fíli doesn't talk about Patrick with him, and Kíli doesn't talk about Patrick with Fíli. Kíli wouldn't mind being allowed to talk to Ori about Patrick. Damn Fíli. 

“Selfish bastard,” Kíli mutters to himself, and goes back to Gimli's door. He'll at least be warm, and he can pick Gimli's lock easily enough, a skill that's come in handy for more legal reasons than illegal. The amount of people who manage to lock themselves out of their own houses and call the garage for help just astounds Kíli. “You brought this on yourself,” he says to imaginary-Gimli. “I'm going to eat all your take-away, and it'll serve you right.” 

“If you drop the picks and leave, I won't phone the police.” 

Kíli does no such thing, too used to be suddenly shouted at, but he does turn, look up, and raise an eyebrow at the woman ordering him about.

She's standing on the end of the deck, her mobile in hand, and she makes his heart stutter for just a minute. 

“Hello to you too,” he says, trying to get his wits about him again. “And don't bother, they know me. They'll just tell you to thump me yourself -”

It's a joke, but no sooner has he said it then he finds himself with his arm twisted behind his back and his face shoved into the door. “That won't be a problem,” she says, calm-as-you-please. “Not a very good burglar, are you? Breaking into a flat above a bakery, doubt he has much worth taking.” 

“He hasn't got anything I want except carry-out and heat,” Kíli tries to explain. “It's my cousin's flat, all right?” 

“Then why were you casing the other one too?” she demands, and Kíli rolls his eyes. 

“I wasn't casing it, I was seeing if I could go in,” he explains. “Could you get off of me already, only I'm starting to lose the feeling there.” She doesn't let up, so Kíli stops struggling. Besides, this way he can feel her breasts against his back. “You going to give me a pat-down? Might have anything down my trousers.” 

“Or nothing at all,” she replies, right in his ear. He laughs, and that must be what convinces her, because she lets him go. “Who are you?” 

“Kíli Durin,” he says, looking her up and down. “Who're you?”

“Tauriel Silvan.” She's even prettier up close, with freckles across her nose. Damn, why did she have to catch him picking locks? He couldn't have been doing something cool? Just his luck. “I'm looking for Legolas. I was told he might be here.” 

“Don't think he's in.” Either that or he slept through Kíli's knocking. “I could keep you company though, if you like.” He grins, not that it seems to do much. She likes him though. He can see it. She's doing that thing girls do, where they tease him, but there's that spark in her eyes, the hint of a true smile in the corner of her mouth, not a polite, sod-off one. “I know the people who own the bakery.” Definitely a smile now, but she's being sly about it. 

Damn, she hadn't even needed a minute to put him up against the wall. That's badass. 

“I need to find Legolas,” she says, but that's definitely a smile, a real one. He's still got a shot with her. “So maybe just coffee. And you could explain why you were picking the locks.” 

“I could.” 

Except the door opens, and Legolas appears, bleary-eyed and scowling. “Tauriel?” He seems confused. “What are you doing here? And with Kíli?” 

“If you could possibly say my name and not make it sound like an insult, I'd appreciate it,” Kíli drawls, not looking at him. Tauriel's more interesting. “Were you just ignoring me?”

“I could hear you talking to yourself,” Legolas answers, crossing his arms over his chest. His hair is in a braid over his shoulder, and he looks hungover. Probably is. “And since it seems they're busy next door, I figured you were just looking for someone else to leech off of.”

“So if I'm a leech, what do you pay with?” Kíli asks aloud, then whistles, long and low. “Oh yeah, almost forgot...” 

“You're disgusting.” Legolas rubs at his temple, and Kíli smirks at Tauriel. He mouths _lightweight_ at her, and though she seems unimpressed with their bickering, that makes her smile again. “And you know this idiot is only eighteen, right?” 

Kíli frowns, and quirks his head at Tauriel. “How old are you?” 

“Twenty-three,” she answers, hitching one shoulder carelessly.

That's only five years. “Works for me.” It comes out like a line, but she doesn't seem to mind. 

“Kill me,” Legolas says aloud, but before Kíli can offer, he says, “Where's Gimli? He's not answering my texts.” It goes unsaid that he better not be answering Kíli's, and that rankles Kíli, reminds him again of just who Gimli ditched him for. A fucking _Greenleaf_. _This_ fucking Greenleaf. 

“He's busy. Family business.” _And none of yours_ , he thinks venomously. He still has that part of Gimli, being Gimli's family. Being a Durin. Even if Gimli tells him, Legolas needs to know it's because Gimli loves him, not because he's a part of their family. 

Legolas looks a bit hurt, and Kíli feels the sting of his own words come back to him. It's not in him to be cruel, much as tries. 

“He's going over with some others to see your dad, actually. Should be back in a bit.” It seems to mend the conversation as much it can ever be mended between them. They might never be friends, but Kíli doesn't want them to hate each other for the rest of their lives either. Well, most of the time he doesn't want that. Still, doesn't seem like Gimli is planning on moving on from him, and Kíli likes Gimli.

He scuffs at the snow still on the deck, and wishes he was in Ori's flat, his head in Ori's lap. Ori's always nice, even when he's lecturing Kíli. 

If Ori tells Fíli that Kíli kissed him, he's probably going to get punched. Maybe he should leave instead, go back to the garage and see if he can find something useful to do there. Fíli hits pretty hard.

“Would 'family business' include that person I see your lot hauling around the village?” Legolas is doing his best to sound scathing, but Tauriel is tying her hair back in a queue, so Kíli gets a better look at her collarbone. It's a nice collarbone. Has a tattoo of a bird and everything. 

Kíli might be a little in love. 

“Do you know anything about him?” Because that's probably important, so he should probably ask. The prat might not answer, but at least he can tell Thorin he _asked_. 

“I have eyes, you idiot. Not a lot of skinny drug addicts with _Gloria_ tattooed on their arm.” Legolas sounds insulted. Kíli doesn't mind insulting him unintentionally. 

Tauriel's hair is nice too. Kíli likes all types, but her hair is a good shade of red, and the way it brushes her skin is sort of distracting him a bit. “Let us in, Legolas, before we freeze,” she says. 

The way he huffs, you'd think she'd asked him something awful and difficult instead of just opening the damn door a little more and letting Kíli into his own damn cousin's flat. He makes sure to sneer at him when he passes, and gets one back. Prat. 

It smells a little like smoke inside, but it's been cold, so Kíli doesn't blame them. He opens the fridge instead, and finds something to eat. Gimli is a bit more capable in the kitchen, so there's less to choose from, but he finds a carton of what might be Mongolian beef mixed with rice, and there's still a few sets of disposable chopsticks on the counter so he doesn't have to find a fork. And there's beer, good beer, because Gimli is a choosy bastard.

“Are you actually eating that cold?” Kíli really hates the way Legolas says things. He can't explain what the problem is, he just always wants to punch him when he's around him too long.

“If Gimli wasn't fucking you, I'd hit you,” he says.

“That worked out so well for you last time, didn't it?” Legolas asks airily, sitting on the bed. 

Kíli flinches when there's an almost inaudible _thump_ against the joint wall. Rolling his eyes, he turns on the kitchen radio, then pops the cap off his beer using the counter top. “Want one?” He offers it to Tauriel, remembering his manners at the last minute. She'll probably say no, seeing as how she knows Legolas, and he and his lot are always -

“Thanks.” She takes a long pull, her head tipped back, and Kíli blinks. 

“Welcome,” he says, after a second, grabbing another for himself. 

“Do you have to have that on?” Legolas grumbles, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“There's things I shouldn't have to hear,” Kíli replies, picking through the peppers to get the good bits of beef. “And my brother having sex is one of them. It's like, right at the top of the list.” He shakes his head, wandering to the sofa. Tauriel doesn't sit, but she might, and Kíli wants her to have options. “So, what brings you to the village?” 

“It was time for a visit,” she says, holding her beer by the neck. “I've been overdue. Besides, the city was boring.” 

“Only you could think Dublin was dull,” Legolas says. “I thought you liked it there?” 

“One place is the same as the next.” Kíli's not sure that's right. Home is home, after all, and nowhere else is home, at least not for him. Tauriel seems to think differently though. “How do you two know one another?”

“Kíli is somehow Gimli's cousin,” Legolas explains. “Fourth or fifth, something removed.” 

“Our great-great grandfathers were brothers,” Kíli recites dully. “And our family stays close. Gimli and me and my brother all grew up together. We were the closest in age amongst this batch of sprogs. Especially since it's girls ahead and girls after the four of us.” When Tauriel raises an eyebrow at this, Kíli quickly explains, “Durin girls are nothing to be trifled with. My cousin Mary once tied me to a tree in the woods and left me there for almost a day because I cut her doll's hair. Thankfully, Gimli found me.” 

“Did you get revenge?” she asks, a smile in her voice.

Kíli shudders and shakes his head. “No, I let it go. I like living, you see.” 

“Isn't Mary the one who joined the Army?” Legolas asks from the bed, now lying down again, curled around a pillow. He doesn't seem all that eager to be alone with Tauriel, despite her coming all the way from Dublin to see him. He doesn't even like Kíli, and he's let him in and seems to want him to stick around, because he's not threatening to throw him out or nothing. 

Not that Kíli's protesting. This flat is Gimli's, and Kíli's comfortable and all right here. The shit the union brings can't touch them in these two little flats over Bombur's bakery. Here, they're as they were when they were children, ignorant and happy. Fíli and Ori are closer now, yeah, and Legolas is here far too often, but Kíli never feels unwelcome or awkward here, like he does everywhere else.

Christ, there's a pretty girl in front of him who smiles at him, and even now Patrick and Liam are ruining things. 

“Yeah, that's the one,” he says, when he realizes he's forgotten to answer Legolas. “Her sister joined the Navy.” Because that's all his family can do, really. Join the union, join the military, sometimes both. Usually both. Those two girls will come back eventually, probably bringing spouses and future children, and the next generation of Durin children will be running about, striking terror into the hearts of the villagers. 

He wants them to come home soon.

“Legolas' mother and mine went to school together,” Tauriel volunteers, her smile wavering. She's trying to catch Kíli's eye, but his good mood is gone. Fucking Patrick. Bloody Liam. Kíli should just kill him and get it over with, since Fíli won't do it. He thinks he could kill someone. Liam wouldn't be too hard. He's a bloody waste of space, and he makes everything wrong. “Are you all right?”

Kíli wants this to be over, and he knows how it could be done.

“I'm fine,” he says, because he is, in his own way. He's fine with what needs to be done, really. Thorin will negotiate with Dáin, and Dáin will negotiate with the Gallaghers, and eventually, Liam will be handed over. Maybe he won't die right away. Maybe that'll be the deal, because Kíli knows his uncle. He'll want the high ground. 

“So what do you do?” he asks, and tries to concentrate on her face, the way her eyes crinkle around the corners when she smiles. 

“I'm a police officer,” she says, tilting her chin forward in challenge, one Kíli smirks at. She's so bright, like a star in the room, and Kíli wants to know what constellation she belongs to. “How many times have you been arrested then?”

On the bed, Legolas snorts. 

“Not many.” Not many, not really. Four or five times, and nothing stuck, obviously. The cops think he's a menace, but he's started to see the humour in the situation. They don't glare at him any more, even though he's not sure why, what's changed. 

Sitting here on Gimli's sofa, flirting with a pretty girl and trying to ignore the past, he feels loose of limb. Easy in a way he wasn't last year, last month. 

“I make jewellery,” he says, pulling the necklace out from under his shirt as proof. Dori had said it was good, and he'd meant it, pointing out everything Kíli had done wrong, but still admiring it. “Perfectly respectable.” 

He's not, but she doesn't seem to mind. 

Someone's mobile goes off, not Kíli's. Legolas', as it turns out. “Gimli's on his way home,” he says, sitting up on his elbow. “Why don't you go downstairs, get something to eat?” 

Tauriel frowns. “I came to see you.”

“I need to talk to Gimli about some things. We'll figure something out for later,” Legolas says.

Kíli hears the lie, and so does she. But she says, “All right,” and mimics Kíli as he rinses out his beer bottle and tosses it in the recycle bin, waiting while he puts the rest of the take away back. The chopsticks go in the bin, and then he doesn't have an excuse to linger. She might. She could push her welcome, maybe, but Legolas is all curled up on the bed, an arm tucked under the pillow, waiting for Gimli the same way Gimli waits for him after classes, sitting on the steps with a cigarette. 

She follows Kíli out, and he could keep flirting.

He could.

But something's wrong.

“Could ask my Auntie to get a few bottles of wine out. It's nothing fancy, but she keeps her stash in the bakery.” And she's always willing to share, his Auntie Moira, especially when someone looks a bit down in the mouth. “Mostly rosé.” Kíli can drink it. 

For some reason, he still expects her to say no.

“Sounds grand,” she says instead. “He did say you were eighteen, right?”

“Yeah,” Kíli confirms. 

“Good.”

They're at the foot of the steps when one of the doors above open, and Fíli steps out, lighting a cigarette. His hair is back in a queue, and there's a moment where Kíli hurts in a way he doesn't understand. His brother isn't a kid any more, he realises for the first time, looking at him now. Fíli looks as hard as nails now, and for just a second, just right now, when Fíli hasn't noticed Kíli and isn't paying him any attention, isn't pretending, Kíli sees it. He sees the way his brother has changed with his year away and his time with Thorin and this business. 

It's not reversible, just like Ori's sadness. Just like Gimli and Legolas. The world is different now, and it's never going to be what it was, not like Kíli hoped. None of his friends are the same. Summer won't make everything all right this year. By the time summer comes, things will be even more different.

He thinks about kissing Ori again, oddly enough. He'd wanted something to have changed inside with himself, wanted himself to be different. But Ori had still just been Ori. Kíli had still just been Kíli. And he couldn't fix anything for either of them. Only Fíli could give Ori that sort of comfort now.

Kíli is loose of limb, easy, the irritation and anger he's carried disappearing. Because he sees Liam, and sees Patrick in his face, and he's _glad_ , no more pain. He can admit that in his own head. He's glad Patrick is dead, because otherwise he'd just be another Liam. 

Sometimes the cops say hello when they see him now, ask about his mother. 

“Is that your brother?” Tauriel is still there. Waiting. 

“Yeah,” Kíli says, turning away. “We look a bit more alike, up close.”

They do. Everyone always says, even now. 

He glances at Tauriel, holding the door open for her, then looks at his own reflection in the glass for just a second before he follows her in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JFC I need a Brit-picker.


End file.
